Anthropic, which faced a class-action lawsuit over allegations that it used works without permission to train its artificial intelligence (AI) models, agreed to pay $1.5 billion (about 2.2 trillion won) in a settlement to the plaintiffs. It is the largest settlement in the history of U.S. copyright lawsuits.
According to Reuters, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on the 20th approved the parties' settlement in the copyright-infringement class action that writers filed against Anthropic. As a result, the writers who joined the class action will receive compensation of about $3,000 (about 4.4 million won) per work. That is four times the statutory minimum damages of $750 typically available in a copyright-infringement case.
This case is the first among class actions brought by writers and news organizations over AI corporations' use of works to reach a final settlement. On 2024, writers including Andrea Bartz, author of the bestselling thriller "We Were Never Here," filed a class-action lawsuit claiming that Anthropic illegally copied and used their works without permission in the process of training its AI model Claude.
The court found that Anthropic's use of lawfully purchased books to train Claude fell under "fair use." However, it determined there was potential copyright infringement in Anthropic's use of illegally copied books for training and held a damages trial only on those parts. Anthropic then agreed with the plaintiffs to pay a total of $1.5 billion, at about $3,000 per each of the 500,000 books in question.
In addition, the court ordered Anthropic to destroy works and copies downloaded from so-called "pirate" sites.