Judge Approves a $1.5 Billion Anthropic Settlement Over Books Used to Train the Claude Chatbot

Source: US News & World Report

“A federal judge has approved a $1.5 billion copyright settlement in which artificial intelligence company Anthropic will pay thousands of authors about $3,000 per book after using pirated copies of their works to train its Claude chatbot. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín said in a Monday ruling that the class-action settlement provides ‘meaningful relief’ to affected authors and publishers. About 91% of the more than 482,000 books covered by the ruling have been claimed by authors or publishers who are now due payment. Plaintiff attorney Justin Nelson said in a statement that the settlement was ‘the largest known copyright recovery in history. We look forward to making distributions to the Class as promptly as possible.'” (07/21/26)

https://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2026-07-21/judge-approves-a-1-5b-anthropic-settlement-over-pirated-books-used-to-train-the-claude-chatbot