A federal judge has approved a $1.5 billion settlement between Anthropic, an artificial intelligence company, and authors who alleged that nearly 500,000 books were illegally used to train chatbots. The decision was made Thursday by U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco after the parties addressed his concerns about the fairness of the agreement.
The settlement will provide approximately $3,000 for each book covered by the deal to authors and publishers. However, it does not cover future works.
In a filing earlier in the week, attorneys described efforts to notify all affected authors and publishers about the agreement so they could claim their share or opt out if they wished to preserve their legal rights. The parties also worked to ensure that no “back room” arrangements would disadvantage lesser-known authors.
Judge Alsup’s main concern focused on making sure every eligible claimant is informed about how to participate in the claims process so that no author is left out. He had previously set a deadline for claims forms submission ahead of Thursday’s hearing to review the settlement again.
He also raised issues regarding whether groups such as the Authors Guild and Association of American Publishers might influence some writers into accepting terms without fully understanding them.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs said in their filing that they expect a high rate of participation in claims and stated that “the settlement will result in a high claims rate, respects existing contracts and is ‘consistent with due process’ and the court’s guidance.”
Earlier this year, Judge Alsup ruled partially against Anthropic: while he found that using copyrighted books for AI training was not illegal per se, he determined Anthropic did wrongfully acquire millions of books from pirate websites to improve its Claude chatbot.
Andrea Bartz, one of three bestselling authors who sued Anthropic last year, expressed her support for the settlement: “Together, authors and publishers are sending a message to AI companies: You are not above the law, and our intellectual property isn’t yours for the taking,” she wrote in a court declaration.
During Thursday’s proceedings, Judge Alsup announced his intention to retire from his position by year’s end.
