US District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín approved the Anthropic deal on 20 July in San Francisco. The settlement first proposed last September resolves a two-year-long class action filed by US based writers Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson in August 2024.
The case accused Anthropic of using pirated books to train its Claude chatbot and disclosure demonstrated how the tech company circumvented permission and licensing to use unauthorised pirated works.
This is the first of many cases set to challenge big tech’s copyright-infringing behaviour.
Under the deal, authors and publishers included will receive $3,000 for each of an estimated 491,000 works covered by this settlement. Payment dates are yet to be confirmed.
The Society of Authors has been supporting its members to claim, and providing information as the case developed. This marks a significant victory, but we continue to call for compensation for the unauthorised use of all authors’ and creators’ works.
Anna Ganley, the SoA’s CEO, said:
“This is the largest settlement ever approved for copyright infringement, and we hope, the first of many successes for creators against big tech.
“Ultimately, this is about copyright theft. And today the extent of this theft has been recognised. This is a landmark ruling and the tip of the iceberg. The message to AI companies who steal authors’ works is clear: you need to pay.”
Whilst some UK authors and SoA members will be receiving a share of the Anthropic Settlement, there are many more who weren’t eligible to join this claim.
We will support authors should a viable UK case arise. As the SoA is not a rightsholder, we cannot do this ourselves.
Longer-term policy solutions are vital to ensure transparency, licensing and renumeration for all uses of creators’ works.
That’s why the Society of Authors is keeping up the pressure on the newly formed UK Government to recognise the risks that unregulated generative AI poses to the creative industries, and to ensure our members’ concerns are addressed in the debate on AI and copyright.
For more information about the Anthropic case read the Author’s Guild ‘What Authors Need To Know’.
