GeneralMedium•7 November 2026•
1 min read
Anthropic to Pay $1.5B in Historic Copyright Settlement
Key Facts
1Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to authors and publishers for using pirated books to train its AI models.
2Federal Judge William Alsup ruled that training on lawfully acquired books is fair use, but pirating copies is infringing.
Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to authors and publishers for using pirated books to train its AI models. ZeroHedge reported that the settlement addresses the unauthorized use of nearly 500,000 books sourced from illicit repositories such as Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror.
Federal Judge William Alsup ruled that while training on lawfully acquired books constitutes "transformative" fair use, sourcing data from pirated copies is a copyright infringement. This historic settlement follows a broader trend of legal challenges in the sector, including lawsuits filed by Dow Jones and the New York Post against other AI entities over content licensing and usage rights.