Anthropic to pay $1.5 billion to book authors to settle AI copyright suit

""This settlement sends a powerful message to AI companies and creators alike that taking copyrighted works from these pirate websites is wrong," Justin Nelson, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in a statement."

""As best as we can tell, it's the largest copyright recovery ever," Nelsons said, according to the Associated Press "It is the first of its kind in the AI era," he added."

""Today's settlement, if approved, will resolve the plaintiffs' remaining legacy claims. We remain committed to developing safe AI systems that help people and organizations extend their capabilities, advance scientific discovery, and solve complex problems," Anthropic's deputy general counsel Aparna Sridhar said in a statement."

Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to a group of book authors and publishers to settle a class action copyright lawsuit alleging use of copyrighted books to train its Claude chatbot. The settlement provides about $3,000 for each of roughly 500,000 books allegedly used, plus interest, and requires destruction of datasets containing the pirated material. A judge previously ruled that training on books acquired under fair use was permissible but that acquiring bootleg copies from online libraries was illegal, allowing the case to proceed toward trial. The payout is reported as the largest U.S. copyright recovery and may influence other AI copyright cases.

Read at Fast Company