US: Anthropic to pay $1.5 billion in AI lawsuit settlement
September 6, 2025
US artificial intelligence (AI) giant Anthropic will pay at least $1.5 billion (€1.3 billion) to settle a class action lawsuit brought by authors, according to court documents filed Friday.
"This landmark settlement far surpasses any other known copyright recovery," said plaintiffs' attorney Justin Nelson. "It is the first of its kind in the AI era."
A trio of authors, Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson, filed the lawsuit last year, accusing Anthropic of using pirated books to train the company's AI chatbot Claude — a major competitor to OpenAI's ChatGPT.
What are the implications of the settlement?
According to the legal filing, the settlement, which requires judicial approval, covers around 500,000 books. Approximately $3,000 (€2,500) will be paid for each affected work.
"This settlement sends a strong message to the AI industry that there are serious consequences when they pirate authors' works to train their AI, robbing those least able to afford it," said Mary Rasenberger, CEO of the Authors Guild, in a statement supporting the deal.
There are several ongoing similar lawsuits against tech companies like OpenAI and Meta.
Copyright holders argue that collecting copyrighted content without permission violates intellectual property rights.
Edited by: Dmytro Hubenko