A federal judge in San Francisco has granted final approval to Anthropic’s $1.5 billion settlement with a group of authors who accused the company of using their books to train its Claude AI chatbot. Sources report that the approval comes from U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín, who signs off on the deal after it received initial approval earlier in the case. The settlement is described across outlets as the largest known U.S. copyright recovery, and the first major case to resolve in a broader wave of lawsuits brought by copyright owners against technology companies over the use of protected works to train large language models.
The case is part of multiple similar actions filed by authors and other rights holders, including news organizations, against AI developers. Reporting also notes that Judge Martínez-Olguín rejected arguments that the settlement amount was too small. One outlet cites an earlier statement from Anthropic that a prior court ruling characterized training AI on books as fair use under U.S. copyright law.
While the settlement closes this specific class action, at least one source says it does not settle wider questions about the use of copyrighted materials in AI training beyond this case.
