ARTFEED — Contemporary Art Intelligence

Anthropic ordered to pay $1.5B for illegal book downloads, develops aggressive new training method

ai-technology · 2026-07-21

Anthropic, an AI company, has been ordered to pay $1.5 billion to authors for illegally downloading their books to train its AI models. The court ruling comes after a lawsuit by authors who claimed copyright infringement. In response, Anthropic has developed a new, aggressive method to feed its AI system, bypassing legal restrictions. The case highlights ongoing tensions between AI development and intellectual property rights.

Key facts

  • Anthropic must pay $1.5 billion to authors
  • The payment is for illegally downloading books
  • The books were used to train AI models
  • A court ruling mandated the payment
  • Authors filed a lawsuit for copyright infringement
  • Anthropic developed a new aggressive training method
  • The new method bypasses legal restrictions
  • The case underscores AI vs. copyright conflicts

Entities

Institutions

  • Anthropic

Sources