A US federal judge has given final approval to Anthropic’s $1.5 billion settlement of a class action copyright lawsuit brought by authors and publishers, allowing the company to begin paying out compensation, though the ruling does little to settle the broader legal question of whether using copyrighted works to train AI models is lawful.
Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin signed off on the settlement on Monday, following the retirement of Judge William Alsup, who had issued preliminary approval and presided over the earlier stages of the case. The settlement is believed to be the largest in the history of US copyright law.
The payout will distribute $3,000 per work across an estimated 500,000 works among rights holders. However, many authors do not view the outcome as a genuine victory, because of how the underlying legal question was resolved.
Alsup ruled that training an AI model on copyrighted text constitutes fair use—a significant finding for the AI industry. The judge found against Anthropic, however, on a separate but related point: the company had sourced part of its training library from pirate websites including Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror rather than purchasing the books it used. It was that specific practice that Alsup found illegal, not the training itself. Anthropic chose to settle rather than face a jury trial on damages.
Because Anthropic settled, the case will not reach an appeals court, meaning Alsup’s fair use ruling will not become binding legal precedent. Other courts remain free to reach different conclusions.
Copyright cases against Google, Meta, Midjourney, and OpenAI remain ongoing.
Most recently, a group of publishers and authors including Hachette and Cengage filed a class action against Google over the use of their works to train Gemini.
