A federal judge has approved Anthropic's $1.5 billion copyright settlement, resolving a class-action lawsuit over AI training data use. The settlement, which will distribute $3,000 per work across an estimated 500,000 works, marks the largest in U.S. copyright law history. The approval comes after a lengthy legal process that included a preliminary ruling last year and final approval by Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin on Monday. Anthropic had built its training library from two sources: books it purchased and scanned, and books it downloaded from pirate sites like Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror. The latter method was deemed illegal by Judge William Alsup, who initially approved the settlement. The payout will be shared among authors and publishers who hold rights to the works involved.
The settlement does not resolve the broader legal question of whether training AI models on copyrighted text constitutes fair use. Judge Alsup ruled in favor of Anthropic on this core issue, a decision seen as a turning point for the AI industry. However, the ruling did not excuse how Anthropic obtained the books in the first place. Anthropic agreed to the settlement to avoid a potential trial and any damages a jury might have awarded. While the final approval closes this case, it does not settle the legal question industry-wide, as Alsup’s ruling was limited to a single district court. Other judges are still free to reach their own conclusions on their own facts, which is exactly what’s happening elsewhere.
The settlement highlights ongoing legal battles over AI training data use. A string of copyright lawsuits continues against companies such as Google, Meta, Midjourney, and OpenAI. Just last week, a group of publishers and authors, including Hachette, Cengage, Elsevier, author Scott Turow, and S.C.R.I.B.E., filed a class-action lawsuit against Google over accusations that the company used their copyrighted works to train its AI platform, Gemini. The case underscores the complexity and ongoing nature of legal challenges in the AI industry.
Source: techcrunch
