Anthropic to Pay Largest Publicly Reported Copyright Settlement in History

Following a filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on August 27 requesting its appeal be held in abeyance, AI company Anthropic has agreed to pay what the plaintiffs are calling “the largest publicly reported copyright recovery in history, larger than any other copyright class action settlement or any individual copyright case litigated to final judgment.”

According to the “Unopposed Motion for Preliminary Approval of Class Settlement” filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Friday, Anthropic will pay the plaintiffs, Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson, and MJ & KJ, Inc. and the Class “at least $1.5 billion dollars, plus interest,” amounting to about $3,000 per 500,000 works in the Class. Furthermore, Anthropic will destroy the pirated datasets and will receive a “past release only” for conduct up to August 25, 2025. “This result is nothing short of remarkable,” wrote the plaintiffs.

The filing further notes that $1.5 billion plus interest is the minimum Anthropic will pay. “[T]he parties are still working to finalize the full Works List,” the plaintiffs explain. “If the Works List ultimately exceeds 500,000 works, then Anthropic will pay an additional $3,000 per work that Anthropic adds to the Works List above 500,000 works.”

The per-work amount of $3,000 is “four times the minimum statutory damages amount and fifteen times the minimum statutory
damages amount for innocent infringement,” said the filing.

While the settlement must still be approved, the filing claims it “easily passes” the relevant tests.

Bartz et. al., who are journalists and book authors, filed the lawsuit in August 2024 alleging that Anthropic’s widespread copyright infringement involves “hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books” from unauthorized sources used to train Anthropic’s Claude AI chatbot. Judge William Alsup denied Anthropic’s motion to stay proceedings pending appeal in August, following Anthropic’s request for permission to file an interlocutory appeal of Alsup’s June order on fair use.

The order on fair use granted summary judgment for Anthropic that its use of the works at issue for training and its scanning of certain works from print-to-digital format were fair, but denied summary judgment for Anthropic that certain pirated library copies of the relevant works must be treated as training copies and ordered a trial with respect to the pirated copies to determine damages, including potentially for willfulness.

The settlement terms will likely have far reaching effects on other AI copyright suits. The Human Artistry Campaign said in a statement Friday that the settlement “is a huge victory not only for the authors involved, but for all writers, artists, and creators who know that their work has value and their rights should be respected when it comes to AI uses.”

The statement added that the Campaign hopes “it helps set a precedent that consent and compensation for works used in AI training are nonnegotiable.”

Some reports have pointed out, however, that the settlement amount is little more than a “costly slap on the wrist” for AI companies like Anthropic, which recently raised another $13 billion.

Artists who want more information about the settlement and requirements can visit AnthropicCopyrightSettlement.com.

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