Anthropic's $1.5B copyright settlement receives final approval

A federal judge has granted final approval to Anthropic's $1.5 billion settlement of a class action copyright lawsuit brought by authors and publishers. Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin signed off on the deal on Monday, after Judge William Alsup, who had issued preliminary approval, retired. The settlement covers approximately 500,000 works, with $3,000 paid per work to rights holders. While the payout is the largest in U.S. copyright history, many creators view it as a loss because Alsup had ruled that training AI on copyrighted text constitutes fair use, a major win for the AI industry. However, Alsup found that Anthropic illegally downloaded books from pirate sites like Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror, and the settlement avoided a trial on that issue. The case does not set binding precedent, leaving other judges free to rule differently in ongoing lawsuits against Google, Meta, Midjourney, and OpenAI. Just last week, publishers including Hachette, Cengage, and Elsevier, along with author Scott Turow and S.C.R.I.B.E., filed a class action against Google over its Gemini AI training.