A federal court in San Francisco has approved Anthropic's $1.5 billion settlement in a copyright lawsuit brought by authors over the training of AI.
A San Francisco federal court has approved a $1.5 billion settlement in a class-action lawsuit against Anthropic, which was filed by authors regarding the unauthorized use of their books to train the AI chatbot Claude. This ruling marks one of the largest copyright settlements in U.S. history.
U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin dismissed objections to the settlement, which some claimed was inadequate. The lawsuit, initiated in 2024, accused Anthropic of utilizing pirated works without permission for the development of its AI technology.
Judge William Alsup had previously given a preliminary nod to the settlement, asserting that while training AI on literature could qualify as fair use, it was problematic for Anthropic to maintain a library of over seven million pirated texts.
Anthropic's Deputy General Counsel, Aparna Shridhar, announced that the settlement was finalized in 2025, with over 91% of eligible authors and publishers already claiming their compensation. Lead attorney Justin Nelson described the agreement as historic, although some authors raised concerns regarding the settlement amount and attorney fees. The court ultimately ruled to award attorneys $101 million, from an initially sought $187.5 million.
Notably, some authors and publishers have chosen to opt out of this settlement, initiating separate lawsuits against Anthropic, which are still in progress. Additionally, in February, Hollywood entities raised allegations of piracy against the Chinese company ByteDance, challenging its AI video generator, Seedance 2.0.
