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District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín said in a Monday ruling
that the class-action settlement provides “meaningful relief” to
affected authors and publishers.
About 91% of the more than 482,000 books covered by the ruling
have been claimed by authors or publishers who are now due
payment.
Plaintiff attorney Justin Nelson said in a statement that the
settlement was "the largest known copyright recovery in history.
We look forward to making distributions to the Class as promptly
as possible.”
U.S. District Judge William Alsup issued the preliminary
approval in San Francisco federal court last September and has
since retired. Alsup had dealt the case a mixed ruling last
summer, finding that training AI chatbots on copyrighted books
wasn’t illegal but that Anthropic wrongfully acquired millions
of books through pirate websites.
Anthropic's deputy general counsel, Aparna Sridhar, highlighted
that ruling Friday as a landmark showing “that training AI on
books is fair use under copyright law.”
“We are pleased that more than 91% of authors and publishers
covered by the settlement have claimed their share of the
payment, and we’re looking forward to bringing this matter to a
close,” Sridhar said in a written statement.
Bestselling thriller novelist Andrea Bartz first brought the
suit with two other authors in 2024. It's the first major
settlement in dozens of AI copyright lawsuits that are still
working their way through courts.
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