Anthropic has settled a class action lawsuit with a group of fiction and nonfiction authors, as announced in a filing on Tuesday with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Anthropic had won a partial victory in a lower court ruling and was in the process of appealing that ruling. No details of the settlement were made public, and Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Called Bartz v. Anthropic, the case deals with Anthropic’s use of books as training material for its large language models. The court had ruled that Anthropic’s use of the books qualified as fair use, but because many of the books were pirated, Anthropic still faced significant financial penalties for its conduct connected to the case.
Nonetheless, Anthropic had applauded the earlier ruling, framing it as a victory for generative AI models. “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,” the company told NPR after the ruling in June.
In a statement to TechCrunch, lawyers for the plaintiffs applauded the settlement. “This historic settlement will benefit all class members,” said attorney Justin Nelson. “We look forward to announcing details of the settlement in the coming weeks.”
Updated 8/27 8:37am ET with a statement from the plaintiffs.
