“A FEDERAL JUDGE JUST APPROVED THE LARGEST KNOWN U.S. COPYRIGHT SETTLEMENT
Anthropic, the AI company behind Claude, will pay $1.5 billion to settle claims that it downloaded and stored pirated books while building its AI training library.
The deal covers 482,460 copyrighted works.
Eligible rightsholders are expected to receive roughly $3,000 per claimed work, divided among authors and publishers where ownership is shared.
More than 440,000 works, or 91.3% of the list, had already been claimed as of the court’s report.
The court previously found that training AI on lawfully acquired copyrighted books could qualify as fair use
It did not extend that protection to Anthropic’s acquisition and storage of millions of pirated books.
The judge also awarded class counsel $101.6 million, well below the $187.5 million requested.”
A FEDERAL JUDGE JUST APPROVED THE LARGEST KNOWN U.S. COPYRIGHT SETTLEMENT
Anthropic, the AI company behind Claude, will pay $1.5 billion to settle claims that it downloaded and stored pirated books while building its AI training library.
The deal covers 482,460 copyrighted… pic.twitter.com/EAOxefVuQd
— Wall St Engine (@wallstengine) July 21, 2026
This is a wake up call for every AI company that thought they could build their models on stolen data without consequences. The era of free pirated training data just got a lot more expensive.