A U.S. federal court in San Francisco on Monday formally approved a $150 million class-action settlement involving artificial intelligence company Anthropic. Previously, the case was filed by a group of writers, accusing Anthropic of using their works without permission to train its AI chatbot Claude. U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin gave final approval to the settlement, rejecting objections that the amount was low. The settlement sets a record for the largest known award in a U.S. copyright case.
The lawsuit is one of dozens filed by copyright owners, including writers and news organizations, against technology companies over copyright ownership of large model training, and is the first major U.S. case to reach a settlement. The agreement was originally approved last September by retired Judge William Alsup. Anthropic deputy general counsel Aparna Sridhar said in a statement that the settlement, reached in 2025, follows a landmark court ruling that "training AI to use books is fair use under copyright law," a ruling that remains in effect today. She also noted that more than 91% of the authors and publishers covered by the settlement have received their share, and the company looks forward to a smooth conclusion to the matter.
Plaintiffs' lead attorney Justin Nelson welcomed what he called a "historic settlement," calling it the largest known copyright recovery in history and looking forward to the speedy release of damages to class members. The writers filed a lawsuit against Anthropic in 2024, accusing the Amazon- and Alphabet-backed company of using unauthorized pirated versions of its books to train Claude to respond to human cues. Judge Alsup ruled last June that Anthropic's use of the author's work constituted a fair use in training Claude, but also found that the company violated rights by keeping more than 7 million pirated books in a "central library" that was not necessarily used for AI training. The trial, originally scheduled to begin in December, was intended to determine the amount of damages Anthropic should be liable for the alleged piracy, with potential damages potentially reaching hundreds of billions of dollars.
The settlement has sparked opposition from some writers who believe the compensation amount is not high enough, pays too much to plaintiffs' attorneys, or unreasonably excludes some copyright holders. Judge Martinez-Holguin overturned those objections in Monday's ruling, noting that complaints about the size of the settlement were not based on a realistic assessment of the overall risks and rewards of a trial, while ruling that the attorneys were awarded more than $101 million in fees, less than the $187.5 million they requested. Some authors and publishers have opted out of the settlement and have filed separate lawsuits against Anthropic that are still pending.