Anthropic ordered to pay largest copyright class action settlement in history

Key Points:

• A federal judge in San Francisco approved a $1.5 billion settlement between AI company Anthropic and a class of authors who accused the company of illegally downloading their copyrighted books, marking the largest copyright class action settlement in history.
• The lawsuit focused on how Anthropic acquired the books, specifically through pirated libraries LibGen and PiLiMi, rather than the legality of training AI models with copyrighted material, which the court had previously ruled as fair use.
• Authors and publishers can claim about $3,000 per pirated book on Anthropic's "Works List," with over 91% of more than 440,000 eligible books already claimed; Anthropic must also delete the pirated files it downloaded.
• The settlement only covers past liability related to data acquisition and does not protect Anthropic from future lawsuits concerning AI-generated content or new claims, as emphasized by Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín.
• The court rejected all 54 objections and additional requests from class members, such as expanding covered works or requiring source attribution, stating these demands exceeded the lawsuit's scope; the case is now closed with ongoing monitoring of fund distribution.