Home / Business and Economy / Anthropic Agrees to Landmark $1.5B Settlement Over AI Copyright Violations
Anthropic Agrees to Landmark $1.5B Settlement Over AI Copyright Violations
5 Sep
Summary
- Anthropic to pay $1.5B to settle class-action lawsuit from authors
- Lawsuit accused Anthropic of using books to train AI chatbot without permission
- Settlement marks largest publicly reported copyright recovery in history
On September 2nd, 2025, Anthropic announced that it has agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit from a group of authors. The lawsuit accused the artificial intelligence company of using their books to train its AI chatbot Claude without obtaining the necessary permissions.
Anthropic and the plaintiffs have filed a request with a U.S. District Judge in San Francisco to approve the settlement, which was initially announced in August without disclosing the terms or amount. If approved, this landmark agreement will be the largest publicly reported copyright recovery in history, exceeding any previous copyright class action settlement or individual copyright case litigated to final judgment.
The proposed deal marks the first settlement in a series of lawsuits brought against tech companies, including OpenAI, Microsoft, and Meta Platforms, over their use of copyrighted material to train generative AI systems. Writers Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson filed the class action against Anthropic last year, arguing that the company had unlawfully used millions of pirated books to teach its AI assistant Claude to respond to human prompts.
