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Anthropic to pay authors $1.5 billion for AI training using their books
Economy
A San Francisco federal court has given final approval to a $1.5 billion settlement between Anthropic and a group of authors who accused the company of illegally using their books to train Claude.
According to Reuters, this is the largest copyright infringement settlement in U.S. history.
The lawsuit was filed in 2024. The authors alleged that Anthropic trained Claude using pirated copies of their books. In September 2025, the court found that the model training itself fell under the fair use principle, but found the storage of more than 7 million pirated copies of books in the company's library, which theoretically could have been used for more than just AI training, to be a violation.
The settlement was also preliminarily approved last September. Some authors opposed it, arguing that the settlement was insufficient, that attorneys were receiving excessive fees, and that some copyright holders were unreasonably excluded from the agreement. However, on Monday, July 20, the court rejected these objections. Judge Martinez-Olguin noted that the criticism of the compensation amount "is not based on a realistic assessment of the risks and potential outcomes of the litigation."
Anthropic Deputy General Counsel Aparna Sridhar stated that more than 91% of the authors and publishers covered by the agreement have applied for compensation, and the company expects to finally dismiss the case.