SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday approved a $1.5 billion settlement between artificial intelligence company Anthropic and authors who allege…
A federal judge on Thursday approved a $1.5 billion settlement between artificial intelligence company Anthropic and authors who allege nearly half a million books had been illegally pirated to train chatbots.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup issued the approval in San Francisco federal court Thursday after the two sides worked to address his concerns about the settlement, which will pay authors and publishers about $3,000 for each of the books covered by the agreement. It does not apply to future works.
“This is a fair settlement,” Alsup said, though he added that distributing it to all parties will be “complicated.” About 465,000 books are on the list of works pirated by Anthropic, according to Justin Nelson, an attorney for the authors.
“We have some of the best lawyers in America in this courtroom and if anyone can do it, you can,” Alsup said.
The American Association of Publishers called the settlement a “major step in the right direction in holding AI developers accountable for reckless and unabashed infringement.”
“Anthropic is hardly a special case when it comes to infringement. Every other major AI developer has trained their models on the backs of authors and publishers, and many have sourced those works from the most notorious infringing sites in the world,” said Maria A.
