A U.S. federal judge gave preliminary approval on Sept. 25 to a landmark $1.5 billion copyright settlement between the AI firm Anthropic and a group of authors who sued them. The agreement marks the first major resolution in litigation over generative AI training and copyright.
The case hinges on authors’ claims that Anthropic improperly used millions of their copyrighted works, many unlicensed, to train its large language model, Claude.
Judge William Alsup, who earlier had pushed back on parts of the deal, said he now considers the settlement “fair,” though final approval depends on satisfying procedural steps, including notice to authors and potential objections. The named plaintiffs include Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, Kirk Wallace Johnson.
The agreement directs Anthropic to pay authors and publishers about $3,000 for each of the books covered by the agreement, which includes about 465,000 works, according to an attorney representing the authors. It does not apply to future books.
The plaintiff says the settlement signals a legal basis for accountability – that AI developers can’t sidestep laws or creators’ rights.
Leaders in the publishing industry also back the pact as a “major step” toward reining in unchecked infringement. The Association of American Publishers called the settlement a “major step in the right direction in holding AI developers accountable for reckless and unabashed infringement.”
Anthropic frames the settlement as an opportunity to shift toward developing “safe AI systems.”
The Anthropic case had been set to go to trial in December last year, with potential damages tallying up to hundreds of billions of dollars. Intellectual property rights advocates say the move is a shot across the bow for rivals like OpenAI, Microsoft and Meta.