Posted on 09/05/2025 4:25:43 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Anthropic told a San Francisco federal judge on Friday that it has agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit from a group of authors who accused the artificial intelligence company of using their books to train its AI chatbot Claude without permission. The plaintiffs in a court filing, opens new tab asked U.S. District Judge William Alsup to approve the settlement, after announcing the agreement in August without disclosing the terms or amount.
"This settlement sends a powerful message to AI companies and creators alike that taking copyrighted works from these pirate websites is wrong,” the authors' lawyers said in a statement. They called it the largest copyright recovery in history and the first of its kind in the artificial intelligence era.
The proposed deal marks the first settlement in a string of lawsuits against tech companies including OpenAI, Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab and Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab over their use of copyrighted material to train generative AI systems.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Usufruct! To use the fruits of someone else’s labors.
I was wondering when I would see a case like this. Took longer than I expected.
“using their books to train its AI chatbot”
They ought to be flattered.
Im reminded of Mario Puzo who wrote the screenplay for The Godfather. It was his first time writing a movie script. A couple years later, after it had won so many academy awards, Puzo decided to try to learn how to properly write screenplays, so he bought a book on the subject. The books first instruction was “read the screenplay of The Godfather”
LOL.
Can we call them royalties?
I have not heard that term in decades.
AI is stealing content created by people.
Google AI search will search websites then summarizes the content for the question you asked. The website article creator does not get paid.
AI books might pick story here and there and combine that is familiar yet not quite suable. Like music that strips parts of a popular song but not enough to lose in court.
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