Anthropic ordered to pay largest copyright class action settlement in history

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.

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, authors and publishers whose pirated books ended up on Anthropic's "Works List" can claim roughly $3,000 per book — about four times the usual minimum for copyright infringement cases. More than 91 percent of eligible works, over 440,000 books, have already been claimed. Anthropic also has to delete the pirated files it downloaded.

The settlement only releases Anthropic from liability for how it acquired the training data in the past — not from future lawsuits over what the chatbot generates, or new claims going forward. Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín was explicit that the settlement does not release claims for future harm or claims "based on the output of AI models."

The court overruled all 54 objections and comments filed by class members and third parties, including requests to expand the list of covered works, add non-monetary remedies like source attribution, or even deletion of Anthropic's models entirely. Per the court's judgment, those requests went beyond what this lawsuit could address.

With the order finalized, the case is officially closed, though the court will keep an eye on how the money actually gets distributed to authors.