Anthropic has reached a settlement in a class action lawsuit brought by authors over the use of their books to train its AI models. The settlement was disclosed Tuesday in a filing with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, though terms of the deal have not yet been made public. Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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The case, known as Bartz v. Anthropic, centered on whether the company’s use of fiction and nonfiction books in model training qualified as fair use. A lower court had previously ruled in Anthropic’s favor on fair use grounds, but because many of the works were obtained from pirated sources, the company still faced potential financial penalties.
At the time, Anthropic characterized the ruling as a victory for generative AI, telling NPR in June: “We believe it’s clear that we acquired books for one purpose only, building large language models, and the court clearly held that use was fair.”
Attorneys for the plaintiffs welcomed the outcome. “This historic settlement will benefit all class members,” said Justin Nelson, one of the lawyers representing the authors, adding that more details will be released in the coming weeks.
