Anthropic settles $1.5bn class action over 7m pirated books

The content outlines recent developments in a class-action lawsuit against Anthropic, an AI company accused of unauthorized use of copyrighted literary works. The lawsuit, initiated by authors and publishers in 2024, claimed that Anthropic used around 500,000 pirated books to train its AI model, Claude. In 2025, the company reached a significant $1.5 billion settlement with many plaintiffs, revealing a total of seven million pirated texts in their database. A U.S.

District Judge ruled that while using copyrighted literature may qualify as fair use for model training, the unauthorized storage of pirated media is infringement. The settlement allows authors to claim $3,000 per work, but not all plaintiffs agreed, with 9% opting for individual legal actions. Additional legal pressures on Anthropic emerged due to separate lawsuits over music copyright infringements.