Dario Amodei, co-founder and chief executive officer of Anthropic, at the World Economic Forum in 2025.
Stefan Wermuth | Bloomberg | Getty Images
A federal judge on Thursday preliminarily approved Anthropic’s offer to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class action lawsuit with a group of authors, in what will be the largest publicly reported copyright recovery in history.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, was brought last year by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson. It alleged that Anthropic illegally downloaded books from pirated databases like Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror.
“We are grateful for the Court’s action today, which brings us one step closer to real accountability for Anthropic and puts all AI companies on notice they can’t shortcut the law or override creators’ rights,” the authors said in a joint statement Thursday.
Anthropic didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
The startup was founded by former OpenAI research executives, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, in 2021. Anthropic, which is valued at $183 billion, is best known for its AI assistant Claude.
AI startups and media companies have been closely following this lawsuit against Anthropic as they work to outline what copyright infringement means in the AI era.
Anthropic initially proposed the $1.5 billion settlement earlier this month. The company said it would pay roughly $3,000 per book plus interest, and it agreed to destroy the datasets containing the allegedly pirated material.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup initially expressed some reservations about Anthropic’s offer, including concerns over how to ensure authors would be properly informed. Alsup ultimately approved the settlement after “several weeks of rigorous assessment and review,” according to a release.
Alsup will consider final approval of the settlement once the notice and claims processes are complete, the release said.
Aparna Sridhar, Anthropic’s deputy general counsel, said in a statement that the company is pleased with the determination, and that the settlement “simply resolves narrow claims about how certain materials were obtained.”
“The decision will allow us to focus on developing safe AI systems that help people and organizations extend their capabilities, advance scientific discovery, and solve complex problems,” Sridhar said.
WATCH: Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5 billion to settle author’s class action lawsuit over AI training
