It was a record setting settlement by Anthropic to authors and it has been rejected by Judge William Alsup with much more to be done. The federal judge has concerns with a $1.5 billion settlement deal and it’ll be forced “down the throat of authors.”

The judge reportedly felt misled by the deal and that it was “nowhere close to complete.” The judge said he was disappointed that counsel have left important questions to be answered in the future.” Questions include some key ones like the list of works involved in the case, the list of authors, the process of notifying members of the class and the claim form members can use to get their settlement payment.

Anthropic was sued for using the works of authors to train its AI model. In the case, U.S. District Judge William Aslup ruled that Anthropic’s use of the books in training models was “exceedingly transformative,” a factor to determine if the use was under legal “fair use.” It was a major decision, the first concerning the issue. But, there was still a question of Anthropic pirating books from the internet to train its models, which would still need to settled in a trial.

In short, they were covered with what they purchased but there was all of the other stuff they pirated that was left to be decided if that was legal or not.

Anthropic in the settlement would have paid $1.5 billion and destroyed datasets used in its models.

About 500,000 authors were involved and they’d have received about $3,000 per work.

The lawyers need to give the class members “very good notice” about the settlement as well as design as claim form where those authors can opt in or out. Anthropic also can’t be sued for the same issue in the future as part of all of this.

The lawyers have until September 15 to submit a final list of works involved in the lawsuit. A class members list and claims form need to be examined and approved by the court by October 10.

After all of that, the court might grant preliminary approval.

(via Bloomberg Law)