Anthropic will pay a record-breaking $1.5 billion to settle copyright lawsuit with authors

Anthropic will pay a record-breaking $1.5 billion to settle a class action lawsuit piracy lawsuit brought by authors. The settlement is the largest-ever payout for a copyright case in the United States.

The AI company behind the Claude chatbot reached a settlement in the case last week, but terms of the agreement weren't disclosed at the time. Now, The New York Times reports that the 500,000 authors involved in the case will get $3,000 per work.

The settlement is "is the first of its kind in the AI era," Justin A. Nelson, the lawyer representing the authors, said in a statement. “This landmark settlement far surpasses any other known copyright recovery. It will provide meaningful compensation for each class work and sets a precedent requiring AI companies to pay copyright owners. This settlement sends a powerful message to AI companies and creators alike that taking copyrighted works from these pirate websites is wrong.”

The case has been closely watched as top AI companies are increasingly facing legal scrutiny over their use of copyrighted works. In June, the judge in the case ruled that Anthropic's use of copyrighted material for training its large language model was fair use, in a significant victory for the company. He did, however, rule that the authors and publishers could pursue piracy claims against the company since the books were downloaded illegally from sites like Library Genesis (also known as "LibGen").

As part of the settlement, Anthropic has also agreed to delete everything that was downloaded illegally and "said that it did not use any pirated works to build A.I. technologies that were publicly released," according to The New York Times. The company has not admitted wrongdoing.

“In June, the District Court issued a landmark ruling on AI development and copyright law, finding that Anthropic's approach to training AI models constitutes fair use," Anthropic's Deputy General Counsel Aparna Sridhar said in a statement. "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.”

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