A US federal judge has given final approval to Anthropic’s $1.5 billion settlement with authors who accused the artificial intelligence company of using their books without permission in the development of its Claude chatbot.
The settlement, approved in San Francisco, is considered the largest known payout in a US copyright case. The ruling also clears the way for payments to authors and publishers covered by the class action.
The dispute began in 2024, when a group of writers alleged that Anthropic had relied on pirated copies of books to train its AI systems. The company, backed by Amazon and Alphabet, had argued that its use of copyrighted works for AI training was protected by the fair-use doctrine.
A previous ruling had accepted that argument in relation to the training of Claude. However, the court separately found that Anthropic had infringed copyright by storing more than seven million pirated books in a central digital library, even though those works were not necessarily used for AI training.
That finding had left the company facing the prospect of a trial over damages that could potentially have reached hundreds of billions of dollars. The settlement brought that dispute to an end for the authors and publishers who remained part of the class action.
The final approval came despite objections from some copyright holders, who argued that the amount was inadequate and that the lawyers representing the class were receiving excessive compensation. The court rejected those challenges, saying the objections did not realistically account for the risks and uncertainties of taking the case to trial.
More than 91% of the authors and publishers covered by the settlement have reportedly claimed their share of the payment. The court also approved more than $101 million in legal fees out of the $187.5 million sought by the attorneys.
The settlement does not end every copyright dispute facing Anthropic. Some authors and publishers chose to opt out and have continued with separate lawsuits against the company.
The case is being closely watched as copyright holders across the publishing and media industries pursue claims against AI companies over the use of protected works in training large language models.
