Anthropic has agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class action lawsuit after it downloaded a massive trove of pirated books to train its large language models.

The settlement amounts to about $3,000 per book and is believed to be the largest ever recovery in a U.S. copyright case, according to the plaintiffs’ attorneys.

“This landmark settlement far surpasses any other known copyright recovery,” said Justin Nelson, the co-lead plaintiffs’ counsel. “It is the first of its kind in the AI era. It will provide meaningful compensation for each class work and sets a precedent requiring AI companies to pay copyright owners. This settlement sends a powerful message to AI companies and creators alike that taking copyrighted works from these pirate websites is wrong.”

Judge William Alsup r

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