Anthropic will pay a record-breaking $1.5 billion to settle a class action lawsuit lawsuit brought by authors and publishers. The settlement is the largest-ever payout for a copyright case in the United States.
The AI company behind the Claude chatbot reached a settlement in the case last week, but terms of the agreement weren’t disclosed at the time. Now, The New York Times reports that the 500,000 authors involved in the case will get $3,000 per work.
The case has been closely watched as top AI companies are increasingly facing legal scrutiny over their use of copyrighted materials. In June, the judge in the case ruled that Anthropic’s use of copyrighted material for training its large language model was fair use, in a significant victory for Anthropic. He did, however, rule that the authors and publishers could pursue piracy claims against the company since the material was downloaded illegally from sites like Library Genesis (also known as “LibGen”).
“In June, the District Court issued a landmark ruling on AI development and copyright law, finding that Anthropic’s approach to training AI models constitutes fair use,” Anthropic’s Deputy General Counsel Aparna Sridhar said in a statement. “Today’s settlement, if approved, will resolve the plaintiffs’ remaining legacy claims. We remain committed to developing safe AI systems that help people and organizations extend their capabilities, advance scientific discovery, and solve complex problems.”
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