A two-year-long copyright class action over Anthropic’s use of books to train its Claude AI has officially ended. A U.S. federal judge approved a $1.5 billion settlement, setting a record for the largest known copyright settlement in the country.
It’s also the first major AI training copyright case in the U.S. to go through full litigation and reach an approved settlement.
The court had previously ruled that training Claude on books constituted fair use. But Anthropic still violated copyright by downloading and storing more than 7 million pirated books.
Over 91% of affected authors and publishers have already filed claims. Some rights holders opted out of the settlement and are pursuing separate lawsuits against Anthropic.