Anthropic agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by a group of authors alleging that the AI company illegally pirated their copyrighted books to use in training its AI models. The parties in the lawsuit filed a motion indicating the agreement with the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday.
We don’t yet know the terms of the settlement. Justin Nelson, lawyer for the authors, told CNET via email that more information will be announced soon. “This historic settlement will benefit all class members,” he said. “We look forward to announcing details of the settlement in the coming weeks.” Anthropic didn’t respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
This settlement is the latest update in a string of legal moves and rulings between the AI company and authors. Earlier this summer, US Senior District Court Judge William Alsup ruled that Anthropic’s use of the copyrighted materials was justifiable as fair use — a concept in copyright law that allows people to use copyrighted content without the rights holder’s permission for specific purposes, like education. The ruling was the first time a court sided with an AI company and said its use of copyrighted material qualified as fair use, though Alsup took care to call out in his ruling that this may not always be true in future cases.
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Two days after Anthropic’s victory, Meta won a similar case under fair use.
Alsup’s ruling also revealed that Anthropic systematically acquired and destroyed thousands of used books to scan them into a private, digitized library for AI training. It was this claim that was recommended for a secondary, separate trial that Anthropic has decided to settle out of court.
Copyright cases like these highlight the tension between creators and AI companies. AI companies have been pushing hard for fair use exceptions as they gobble up huge swaths of data to train their AI models and don’t want to pay or wait to license them. Without legislation guiding how AI companies can develop and train AI, court cases like these have become important in shaping the future of the companies and the products that people use daily. Just like how we saw Alsup’s Anthropic analysis referenced in Meta’s case, each case helps build precedent that guides the legal guardrails and green lights around this technology.
For more, check out our guide to understanding copyright in the age of AI.
