Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, known for its Claude chatbot, has agreed to a $1.5 billion settlement in a class-action lawsuit brought by authors alleging the company used pirated books to train its AI models. If approved by a judge, this settlement would provide approximately $3,000 per book for up to 500,000 works, marking what may be the largest copyright recovery in U.S. history.
Although a June court ruling determined that training AI on copyrighted material might fall under “fair use,” it also condemned Anthropic’s acquisition methods, downloading millions of books from pirate sites like Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror, as infringing.
As part of the deal, Anthropic will destroy all pirated datasets and adopt legal means for sourcing training materials moving forward.
This settlement is considered a turning point in AI-related copyright disputes, setting a precedent for how creative rights are protected in the age of artificial intelligence and influencing future lawsuits against other tech giants in the field.
Source: Ars Technica
