Overview

• Anthropic will pay a minimum of $1.5 billion to a fund for authors, rights holders and publishers over claims it downloaded millions of pirated books to train its models.
• The proposed agreement requires destruction of the disputed digital copies and could rise if the final list tops 500,000 books, triggering an extra $3,000 per title.
• Judge William Alsup must approve the deal, with a hearing set Monday in federal court in San Francisco, averting a December damages trial if validated.
• Anthropic updated its terms to block entities more than 50% owned by companies in jurisdictions where its products are not authorized, citing China and referencing Russia, North Korea and Iran, to cut off access via foreign subsidiaries.
• Plaintiffs’ counsel calls the payout the largest of its kind in the AI era, as parallel litigation continues, including a new lawsuit by two authors accusing Apple of training on pirated books.