Anthropic, an artificial intelligence company, has agreed to a $1.5 billion settlement in a class-action lawsuit brought by book authors. The lawsuit alleges that Anthropic utilized pirated copies of various works to train its AI chatbot, Claude. If approved by a federal judge, the settlement may influence future legal confrontations between AI companies and creative professionals, including writers and artists, who claim copyright infringement.
Under the terms of the settlement, each author is expected to receive about $3,000 for each of the estimated 500,000 books involved. The authors leading the lawsuit include thriller writer Andrea Bartz and nonfiction authors Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson, who filed the case last year.
In a June ruling, a federal judge found that while training AI on copyrighted texts was not illegal, Anthropic obtained millions of books through piracy, specifically from unauthorized sources like Library Genesis and an online library called Books3. Experts suggest that Anthropic could have faced far greater financial penalties if the case had gone to trial, with estimations running into the billions.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup is scheduled to review the settlement terms. Books are vital resources for training AI models, as they provide extensive data needed for understanding language patterns. The Authors Guild highlighted that damages could have been significantly higher had the case proceeded to trial.
The settlement’s specifics indicate a strategic move by Anthropic to avoid potential liabilities and reinforce the need for ethical sourcing of materials used in AI training. The outcome also sends a message to the AI industry about the legal implications of utilizing copyrighted works without permission.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/05/anthropic-settlement-ai-book-lawsuit