Federal Judge Araceli Martinez-Olgin in San Francisco has approved an unprecedented settlement between the corporation Anthropic and a group of writers. The amount of the copyright dispute settlement reached $1.5 billion, marking the largest compensation case in the history of the artificial intelligence industry.
History of the conflict: from accusations to court
It all began in 2024 when a group of authors filed a class-action lawsuit against the company that created the Claude language models. The writers accused the tech giant of using pirated copies of their works to train neural networks without obtaining permission or paying remuneration.
Initially, the case was heard by Judge William Alsup. During the proceedings, he issued a contradictory ruling: on the one hand, he determined that the use of texts for model training falls under the principle of fair use, but on the other, he acknowledged that Anthropic violated the law by retaining 7 million pirated books in its central library.
Why the first deal did not pass
The path to the final payout proved thorny. In September of last year, Judge Alsup rejected the initial settlement offer. He expressed serious concern that the terms of the deal were imposed on the authors, calling the agreement "far from complete" and pointing out numerous unresolved issues.
Following this incident, Anthropic took steps to clarify the situation. The company launched an official settlement website, where a detailed list of affected works was published. This allowed authors to accurately check if their works were included in the database and apply for compensation. Ultimately, the agreement covered more than 480,000 works.
Terms of the final agreement
The case passed to U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olgin, who replaced the retired Alsup. She analyzed the updated terms and approved the deal. According to the document, authors will receive compensation of approximately $3,000 for each work that was used in training the models.
A key condition of the agreement was Anthropic's obligation to destroy all pirated copies of books stored in their libraries, which should prevent similar violations in the future.
Authors' reaction
Despite the record amount, the decision was not universal. Some plaintiffs considered the proposed payment of $3,000 per book insufficient to cover actual damages. These authors declined to participate in the collective agreement to file separate lawsuits against the company and attempt to secure higher compensation individually.
