Anthropic has agreed to pay $1.5 billion to Settle an AI Lawsuit with Authors
As we bring the news of Warner Bros. Discovery’s lawsuit against Midjourney, another case involving AI and theft is being settled. Anthropic has agreed to pay at least $1.5 billion into a class action fund as part of a settlement. The litigation was brought by a group of book authors.
The settlement releases Anthropic for it conduct up to August 25. That means new claims could be filed for any conduct after that date. Anthropic will also destroy the datasets used in its models.
The settlement amount is about $3,000 per class work.
A hearing in the case is scheduled for September 8. A “settlement in principle” was previously announced by Anthropic and the creators.
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.
Even though they’ll be paying $1.5 billion, it is a win for Antropic and possibly other AI companies allowing them to purchase a copy of the work, and then train their model off of it.
While $3,000 might not seem like a lot, it’s more than the $750 statutory damages amount a jury could award and more than the $200 amount if Anthropic were to prevail on its defense of innocent infringement.
