U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic has agreed to pay at least $1.5 billion (€1.3 billion) to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by authors who allege the company used pirated copies of their books to train its AI chatbot, Claude.
This settlement, if approved by a judge as soon as Monday, could mark a turning point in legal battles between AI companies and creative professionals over copyright infringement.
The lawsuit was initiated in 2024 by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson, who claimed that Anthropic downloaded approximately 465,000 books from illegal sources like Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror to train its AI models.
Under the terms of the proposed settlement, authors would receive an estimated $3,000 for each pirated book used to train Anthropic’s large language models, which power its popular chatbot, Claude.
The settlement also requires Anthropic to destroy the pirated datasets and allows for additional claims if more works are discovered.
Anthropic, backed by Amazon and Alphabet, did not admit liability but stated it remains committed to developing safe AI systems that help people and organizations extend their capabilities, advance scientific discovery, and solve complex problems.
About the Author
