US judge closes the book on first big AI copyright suit, ordering Anthropic to pay $1.5 billion settlement
Overview & Key Takeaways
The end of the story or just the start of a fresh chapter?
One reason I'm so anti-generative AI is because many models rely on a data set containing written or visual work used without the original creator's permission. As a writer myself, it's a small comfort then that the copyright suit brought against Anthropic has been settled in favour of the author plaintiffs.
Anthropic leveraged a library of millions of pirated books to train its Claude chatbot and, as a result, the AI company is now set to pay out a copyright settlement of $1.5 billion (via Euro News). Some of the affected authors argued this pay out was too small but, as of July 20, a US judge has now approved the deal, closing the book on one of the largest copyright class action lawsuits in US history.
Anthropic agreed to pay the $1.5 billion settlement back in September 2025, but a US judge only approved the deal this week. The settlement covers an approximate total of 500,000 works, with affected authors and publishers to be paid $3,000 for each pirated work. Anthropic says that 91% of those eligible have now filed a claim.
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Flicking back to the beginning of this saga, writers Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson originally brought their lawsuit against Anthropic in 2024. The plaintiffs alleged that the AI company had used pirated books to train Claude.
In June 2025, a judge ruled that using the authors' work to train AI models fell under 'fair use' within US copyright law—however, Anthropic was not off the hook legally as many of the books that were fed to Claude were 'found' online and not lawfully acquired.
(Image credit: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Considering the discovery of Anthropic's 'found' library originally exposed the company to statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each work, I can certainly see why some authors thought the settlement amount was too low.
Add to that the private AI company enjoyed a $965 billion valuation back in May, and the $1.5 billion settlement increasingly feels like a slap on the wrist for Anthropic (mind you, the company also recently predicted it would only just be seeing its first profitable quarter this year).
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Still, I suppose it's not a completely bleak resolution for creatives in the age of AI. Google, OpenAI, and Meta are each facing similar court cases over their own AI training practices. If any of these or other AI companies are found to have infringed upon creatives' copyright, here's hoping for a resolution that results in a bit more than just stinging wrists.
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