Anthropic agrees to pay authors over $1.5 billion for using their work to train AI, totaling around $3,000 a book

"Anthropic agreed to pay over $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by authors who allege the company illegally used their books to train its artificial intelligence models, according to a Friday court filing. The proposed class-action settlement, if approved by a federal judge, would be "the largest publicly reported copyright recovery in history," according to lawyers from Anthropic and the authors."

"It also sets a new standard for AI companies compensating artists, authors, and other copyright holders for training large language models on their work, according to Justin Nelson, an attorney at Susman Godfrey representing the artists. "This landmark settlement far surpasses any other known copyright recovery, " Nelson told Business Insider. "It is the first of its kind in the AI era. It will provide meaningful compensation for each class work and sets a precedent requiring AI companies to pay copyright owners.""

"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 money would go to authors whose books were included in Pirate Mirror Library and Library Genesis, two databases of pirated books Anthropic used for training. Lawyers for Anthropic and the authors believe 500,000 books are in the database, but said Anthropic would shell out more cash if more books were found."

Anthropic agreed to a proposed settlement exceeding $1.5 billion to resolve a class-action suit alleging illegal use of copyrighted books to train its large language models. The settlement estimates roughly $3,000 per pirated book and targets works drawn from Pirate Mirror Library and Library Genesis. Lawyers identified about 500,000 copyrighted books in the datasets, with provisions to increase payments if additional titles are found. Anthropic must destroy its copies of those datasets after identifying and paying rights holders and could still be held liable for future use of pirated books. The settlement establishes a notable precedent for compensating copyright holders.

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