Judge approves Anthropics $1.5 billion settlement with authors
A federal judge in San Francisco has granted final approval to a $1.5 billion settlement between Anthropic and a class of authors who accused the AI company of illegally downloading their copyrighted books, closing out what the court called the largest copyright class action settlement in history. U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín signed the order on July 20 , resolving claims brought by lead plaintiffs Andrea Bartz, Kirk Wallace Johnson, and others over Anthropic's use of pirated libraries LibGen and PiLiMi to build its book collection. Notably, the underlying dispute centered on how Anthropic acquired the books, not on whether training AI models with copyrighted material is lawful. SEE ALSO: Anthropic to provide California government with AI tools In an earlier ruling cited throughout the order , the court had already determined that the use of training itself constituted fair use. Per the settlement, ...