Anthropic to pay $1.5B to settle authors’ lawsuit over pirated books

AI company Anthropic has agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit by authors who said their books were illegally taken from pirate websites and used to train its chatbot, Claude. If approved by a San Francisco judge, the deal would be one of the largest copyright recoveries in history.

The settlement will pay writers about $3,000 per book, covering an estimated 500,000 works. Anthropic has also agreed to delete the pirated files. Authors including Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson launched the case in 2024 after finding their books in datasets from sites such as Library Genesis and Books3.

A June ruling found that while training AI on copyrighted works could count as ‘fair use,’ Anthropic had wrongfully obtained millions of pirated titles. Facing a costly trial in December, the company opted to settle.

The deal could shape other cases against AI firms, including lawsuits involving OpenAI and Microsoft. While authors welcomed the payout as a rare win for creators, critics say it fits a pattern of tech companies breaking rules first and paying later.