Anthropic agrees to settle authors' AI lawsuit for $1.5 billion

AI company Anthropic has agreed to settle a lawsuit from authors. The cost: $1.5 billion.

A judge still needs to approve the settlement, but lawyers representing the group of authors celebrated the major update in the case.

"As best as we can tell, it’s the largest copyright recovery ever," Justin Nelson, a lawyer for the authors, told the Associated Press. "It is the first of its kind in the AI era."

The authors' class-action lawsuit argued that Anthropic took pirated copies of the book to train its AI chatbot, Claude. The lawsuit covered about 500,000 works, meaning the total payout could come in around $3,000 per work, should the settlement be approved.

Aparna Sridhar, Anthropic’s deputy general counsel, emphasized to Ars Technica in a statement that the court found "Anthropic’s approach to training AI models constitutes fair use."

"Today’s settlement, if approved, will resolve the plaintiffs’ remaining legacy claims," Sridhar told Ars. "We remain committed to developing safe AI systems that help people and organizations extend their capabilities, advance scientific discovery and solve complex problems."

Should the settlement ultimately be approved, it could prove to be an important landmark in the fight against AI companies. Many artists, publishers, and creatives have sued AI companies, including famous authors George RR Martin and John Grisham, who, among others, sued OpenAI, claiming it infringed copyrights to train its model.

Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, filed a lawsuit in April against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis' copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.