Authors whose works were included in a $1.5 billion piracy settlement with the AI developer Anthropic can start filing claims now to get paid after a federal judge approved the deal last week.
Judge William Alsup of the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals initially withheld approval of the settlement over concerns that authors wouldn't have enough time to file. The judge gave his sign-off for the settlement on Sept. 25. The settlement stems from a lawsuit alleging Anthropic illegally downloaded nearly 500,000 copyrighted works on Library Genesis (LibGen) and Pirate Library Mirror (PiLiMi) to train its AI chatbot, Claude.
Anthropic is expected to pay copyright owners $3,000 per book included in the settlement. Authors and copyright owners not on the list won't be eligible for settlement payments.
This is the first major settlement by an AI company related to the use of copyrighted materials to train large language models, but it likely won't be the last.
"I'm happy to see some accountability for the way companies like this have stolen authors' works," said CNET senior writer Jeff Carlson, the author of several books that were included in the settlement. "And the prospect of a settlement amount that isn't just a small token amount is somewhat exciting. But since this is also book publishing, I'm taking it with a grain of salt so far because that's often all that authors end up with."
To get the money, authors will have to file a claim with the settlement administrator. Here's how.
What happens now?
Now that the settlement has reached a preliminary approval, the case is now moving into the notice and claims phase.
The website, AnthropicCopyrightSettlement.com, includes a searchable list of works included in the settlement, important documents, key dates, and instructions on how to file a claim once authors receive their official settlement notice.
Who can receive a payout?
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