On July 20 local time, the U.S. Federal Court in San Francisco formally approved a US$1.5 billion (approximately RMB 10.15 billion) copyright settlement agreement between U.S. artificial intelligence company Anthropic and a class action filed by authors. It is reported that this case is the first artificial intelligence copyright dispute to reach a settlement in the United States, and is currently the copyright litigation settlement with the highest known amount in the country.
In 2024, numerous copyright holders (including authors and news media) filed a class action, alleging that Anthropic used pirated books without permission to train its AI chatbot Claude. The plaintiffs contended that this conduct constituted a serious infringement of their copyrights.
In June 2025, a judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that training AI models using lawfully obtained copyrighted works constitutes "Fair Use" under U.S. copyright law. However, Anthropic's act of obtaining from pirated websites and retaining for an extended period more than 7 million pirated books to build its training database fell outside the scope of fair use, and therefore it remained liable for infringement. Ultimately, Anthropic elected to pay US$1.5 billion to reach a settlement agreement with the plaintiffs.
Although the agreement has been approved by the court, some authors have raised objections to the damages amount and the allocation of attorneys' fees, contending that the compensation is too low, that the plaintiffs' attorneys stand to gain excessively, or that certain copyright holders were erroneously excluded. The U.S. District Judge presiding over the case, Araceli Martinez-Olguin, rejected the objections regarding inadequate compensation and excessive attorneys' fees, and formally approved the settlement agreement, while also awarding over US$101 million in attorneys' fees to the plaintiffs' counsel. Under the terms of the agreement, the settlement fund will be used to compensate rights holders of approximately 500,000 works, corresponding to an average of about US$3,000 per work.
It is reported that over 91% of eligible authors and publishers have already applied to receive compensation. Meanwhile, some authors who opted out of the class action will continue to pursue litigation against Anthropic in their individual capacities.
