2026-10-29——
Anthropic to pay $1.5B to settle authors' class action over pirated books used to train Claude
A short entry: a summary of the public record, checked against its sources, not yet read and analysed by Gianluca. How the register works
Anthropic agreed to pay approximately $1.5 billion to settle a class action brought by authors over books downloaded from LibGen and PiLiMi to train its Claude chatbot. Approximately 500,000 eligible titles will receive about $3,000 each, with initial payments to claimants scheduled for the week of November 23, 2026.
What happened
- The settlement was announced on September 5, 2025, and preliminarily approved by Judge William Alsup on September 25, 2025.
- In June 2025, Judge Alsup ruled that training AI on legally acquired books was fair use, but that Anthropic's downloading of pirated copies was not.
- The class covers rightsholders of books with ISBN or ASIN registered with the U.S. Copyright Office within five years of publication and either within three months of publication or before the August 10, 2022 download date.
- Approximately 500,000 titles out of about 7 million copies Anthropic downloaded from LibGen and PiLiMi qualify for the class after deduplication and eligibility filtering.
- The default split between publishers and authors for trade and university press titles is 50/50; sole-owner authors (reverted rights, self-published, or work-for-hire) receive 100 percent of the approximately $3,000 per title.
- Anthropic agreed to destroy the original pirated book files it downloaded.
Who is involved
Anthropic
Anthropic is an AI safety and research company.
Authors Guild
The Authors Guild is the nation's oldest and largest professional organization for published writers.
Sources
- authorsguild.org — primary
- npr.org — party background
- cbsnews.com — party background
- en.wikipedia.org — party background
- authorsguild.org — party background
Announced 2026-10-29