Anthropic has agreed to pay at least $1.5 billion to authors whose pirated works it used to train its AI models, creating a precedent for AI companies compensating for illegal content use. The settlement involves establishing a fund valuing each pirated book at $3,000 and destroying the pirated materials, highlighting increasing legal risks for AI firms.
A California federal judge has allowed a class-action lawsuit against Anthropic, alleging the AI company downloaded up to seven million copyrighted books from pirated sources to train its chatbot Claude, violating the Copyright Act. The lawsuit, filed by authors including Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson, joins a broader trend of legal actions against AI firms over copyright issues, with some cases focusing on unauthorized data use and others on licensing disputes.