Anthropic’s landmark $1.5B copyright settlement is approved

A federal judge has given final approval to a $1.5 billion copyright settlement between Anthropic and authors and publishers who sued over copyright infringement. The settlement will distribute $3,000 per work across an estimated 500,000 works to the rights holders. The case centered on how Anthropic obtained books for training its AI model: while a judge ruled that training AI on copyrighted text counts as fair use, Anthropic had illegally obtained some books from pirate sites, which led to the settlement rather than a trial. The settlement does not create binding legal precedent since it was a single district court decision and Anthropic chose to settle, meaning other copyright lawsuits against companies like Google, Meta, Midjourney, and OpenAI will continue without this case's guidance.