Anthropic, an AI company, will pay $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by authors who claimed the company used pirated copies of their books to train its chatbot, Claude. This landmark settlement, if approved, could reshape legal battles between AI companies and creatives over copyright infringement. The settlement involves approximately 500,000 books, with authors receiving around $3,000 each. A judge previously ruled that training AI on copyrighted material wasn't illegal, but Anthropic's method of obtaining the books was. The settlement includes the destruction of the pirated files and could influence similar lawsuits against other AI companies.

Prepared by Christopher Adams and reviewed by editorial team.