A federal judge has preliminarily approved the proposed Anthropic settlement to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class action lawsuit with a group of authors.

According to CNBC, the Anthropic settlement will be the largest publicly reported copyright recovery in history.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, was brought last year by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson. It alleged that Anthropic illegally downloaded books from pirated databases like Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror.

“We are grateful for the Court’s action today, which brings us one step closer to real accountability for Anthropic and puts all AI companies on notice they can’t shortcut the law or override creators’ rights,” the authors said in a joint statement Thursday.

Anthropic initially proposed the $1.5 billion settlement earlier this month. The company said it would pay roughly $3,000 per book plus interest, and it agreed to destroy the datasets containing the allegedly pirated material.

However, California District Judge William Alsup initially expressed grave concerns that lawyers rushed the deal, which he said risked being shoved “down the throat of authors.”

Apparently, he’s satisfied now! 😉 Alsup ultimately approved the settlement after “several weeks of rigorous assessment and review,” according to a release. Alsup will consider final approval of the settlement once the notice and claims processes are complete, the release said.

So, what do you think? Are you surprised by the news of the Anthropic settlement? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Image created using Microsoft Designer, using the term “robot lawyers engaged in tug of war”.

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