Anthropic tells US judge it will pay $1.5 billion to settle author class action

"Anthropic told a San Francisco federal judge on Friday that it has agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit from a group of authors who accused the artificial intelligence company of using their books to train its AI chatbot Claude without permission. Anthropic and the plaintiffs in a court filing asked U.S. District Judge William Alsup to approve the settlement, after announcing the agreement in August without disclosing the terms or amount."

"If approved, this landmark settlement will be the largest publicly reported copyright recovery in history, larger than any other copyright class action settlement or any individual copyright case litigated to final judgment, the plaintiffs said in the filing. The proposed deal marks the first settlement in a string of lawsuits against tech companies including OpenAI, Microsoft and Meta Platforms over their use of copyrighted material to train generative AI systems."

"The companies have argued their systems make fair use of copyrighted material to create new, transformative content. Alsup ruled in June that Anthropic made fair use of the authors' work to train Claude, but found that the company violated their rights by saving more than 7 million pirated books to a central library that would not necessarily be used for that purpose."

Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class-action filed by a group of writers who alleged the company used their books without permission to train its AI assistant Claude. The settlement is presented as the largest publicly reported copyright recovery in history and the first among several lawsuits targeting major tech firms over use of copyrighted material for generative AI training. Anthropic had argued fair use, and a judge ruled in June that training constituted fair use but found a rights violation for saving more than 7 million pirated books in a central library. A December trial had been scheduled to assess damages before the settlement.

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