Anthropic to Pay $1.5 Billion for Copyright: A Record Settlement in US History

One of the major lawsuits in the world of AI has come to an end. Anthropic, the developer of the Claude chatbot, has agreed to pay $1.5 billion in damages for copyright infringement. This settlement, approved by a US Federal Court, is recorded as the largest compensation related to intellectual property in the country's history. This was reported by Ixbt.com reports .

This decision was made based on a class-action lawsuit filed in 2024 by writers Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson. The authors accused Anthropic of using hundreds of thousands of books without permission to train its Claude model. According to the plaintiffs, the foundation of the company's business model was the mass appropriation of copyrighted works.

During the trial, it was revealed that Anthropic had indeed obtained millions of books illegally through "shadow" libraries like LibGen and PiLiMi. However, the court focused on an important aspect: using books to train AI models falls under the "fair use" principle in US law. Nevertheless, the parties preferred to reach a mutual settlement.

Compensation amount and payments to authors

Under the terms of the agreement, the allocated funds will be distributed among approximately 500,000 works. This means an average of $3,000 per work. It is worth noting that this amount is nearly four times higher than the maximum statutory compensation for willful copyright infringement.

Anthropic representative Aparna Sridhar stated that the company is pleased with the conclusion of this lawsuit. According to her, more than 91% of eligible authors and publishers have already expressed their desire to receive their share. Payments will be made to creators whose works were found in the aforementioned illegal libraries.

Impact on the AI industry

Although $1.5 billion seems like a huge sum, it is not expected to be a heavy blow for Anthropic. The company was valued at $183 billion after its latest investment rounds. It is currently preparing for an IPO with a valuation of $1 trillion. Previously, the company had expressed concerns that such fines could be "catastrophic" for the business.

This event marks a new stage in regulating the relationship between AI and copyright worldwide. This is also an important signal for users and content creators, as global tech giants will now be forced to take the financial interests of authors into account more when building databases.