Judge Approves Anthropic's $1.5 Billion Settlement in Authors' AI Copyright Lawsuit
The landmark decision resolves claims that the AI company misused books to train its Claude chatbot, marking the first major US copyright case of its kind to settle.
A federal judge in San Francisco has granted final approval to Anthropic’s $1.5 billion settlement resolving a class action lawsuit filed by authors who alleged the artificial intelligence company used their books without permission to train its AI chatbot, Claude. The settlement represents the largest known resolution of a US copyright case involving AI training data.
District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin finalized the settlement on Monday, rejecting arguments from some authors that the amount was insufficient. The case, initiated in 2024, accused Anthropic, which receives backing from Amazon and Alphabet, of utilizing unauthorized copies of books to develop Claude's ability to respond to user prompts.
Now-retired Judge William Alsup had initially given preliminary approval to the deal in September. Lead attorney for the authors, Justin Nelson, expressed satisfaction with the court’s decision, calling it a "historic settlement" and a "largest known copyright recovery in history." He added that the legal team plans to expedite payments to the authors covered by the agreement.
While Alsup had previously ruled in June that Anthropic made fair use of authors' works for AI training, he also found that the company violated authors' rights by storing over 7 million books in a "central library" that might not be directly used for AI development. A trial had been scheduled to commence in December to determine potential damages, which could have reached hundreds of billions of dollars.
Despite the settlement, some authors raised objections, contending that the settlement amount was too low, disproportionately compensated the plaintiffs' attorneys, or improperly excluded certain copyright holders. Judge Martinez-Olguin overruled these objections, stating that the criticisms regarding the settlement's size were not based on a realistic assessment of the risks and potential outcomes of a trial. The judge did approve attorney fees exceeding $101 million out of the $187.5 million requested.
A significant portion of the works included in the settlement, over 92% of the more than 480,000 items, had claims filed against them by authors and other copyright holders, according to an attorney for the authors presented during a court hearing. However, some authors and publishers opted out of the settlement and are pursuing separate legal actions against Anthropic that remain ongoing.