Anthropic reaches historic $1.5 billion settlement with authors

Anthropic, one of the leading companies in the field of AI, has concluded a major lawsuit regarding copyright infringement. A US federal judge has officially approved a $1.5 billion settlement between the company and a group of publishers and authors. This is recorded as the largest compensation payout in the history of US copyright law. This is reported by Techcrunch.com reports.

According to Reuters, US District Judge for the Northern District of California, Araceli Martinez-Olguin, signed the settlement on Monday. In this case, Anthropic was accused of illegally downloading and storing millions of books to train its AI models. The company will now pay approximately $3,000 in compensation for each work.

Copyright and the issue of "fair use"

This lawsuit became a turning point for the AI industry. Judge William Alsup (who previously presided over the case and is now retired) found that training AI models on copyrighted texts qualifies as "fair use." This decision is seen as a major victory for tech giants.

However, Anthropic's method of acquiring the books was found to be unlawful. It turned out that the company used not only purchased books but also materials downloaded from pirate sites like Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror to build its library. The judge deemed this specific action illegal, and the company decided to settle with the plaintiffs to avoid heavy fines.

Implications for the industry and ongoing lawsuits

Although the Anthropic case has concluded, this does not mean a final legal resolution for the entire AI industry. Because the company chose to settle, the case did not reach the appellate stage and did not become a binding precedent for other courts. This means that other judges may reach different conclusions in similar cases.

Currently, a number of lawsuits against major companies regarding copyright are ongoing:

• OpenAI and Microsoft are accused of using media materials to train ChatGPT models;
• Google recently faced a new class-action lawsuit regarding its Gemini platform;
• Meta and Midjourney are being sued for the illegal appropriation of images and texts.

These international court decisions are also important for users and content creators in Uzbekistan. Strengthening intellectual property protection measures globally may directly affect the pricing and terms of use for AI services in the future. The $1.5 billion that Anthropic will pay is expected to cover approximately 500,000 works.