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Harry Potter publisher to receive millions in Anthropic copyright settlement
Bloomsbury, the publisher behind Harry Potter, JK Rowling, Sarah J Maas and Susanna Clarke, is set to receive a multimillion-pound payout as part of a $1.5bn copyright settlement between AI firm Anthropic and thousands of authors and publishers. The case centres on Anthropic's use of copyrighted books to train its Claude chatbots without permission, a practice at the heart of a wider legal battle over whether AI firms can rely on "fair use" or must pay creators for the material used to build their systems.
Bloomsbury has 14,087 titles listed in the settlement, with compensation proposed at roughly $3,000 per title, and expects payments in instalments from later this financial year, split with its authors. After roughly 10% is deducted for legal and other costs, Bloomsbury and the affected authors are each expected to receive about $19m (£14m). The lawsuit was brought by novelist Andrea Bartz and two others in 2024, covering 482,000 works, of which 91% have now been claimed; a US judge called the deal "meaningful relief", and the authors' lawyer described it as the largest known copyright recovery in history. It is the first major settlement among numerous AI copyright cases still working through US courts.
In short
- Bloomsbury to get millions from Anthropic's $1.5bn AI copyright settlement
- 14,087 Bloomsbury titles included, at about $3,000 each
- Case is the first major settlement among many pending AI copyright lawsuits
Steelman: both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
AI model development relies on learning patterns from vast datasets in a transformative way—models don't reproduce copyrighted text but learn underlying structures, which should qualify as fair use similar to search engines or other technologies. Restricting access to training data could significantly impede AI innovation that benefits society broadly, from medical research to accessibility tools. While creators deserve fair compensation, settlements like this one can achieve that without prohibiting beneficial technological progress.
The case against
Authors and publishers invested substantial time and resources to create original works, and they deserve meaningful control over how those creations are used and monetised. Allowing corporations to build enormously valuable AI systems on copyrighted works without explicit permission or compensation undermines the incentive structures that enable creative industries. Rather than being prohibited from training, AI companies should obtain licences or compensate creators fairly—exactly what this settlement represents, vindicating the principle that creators' labour deserves recognition.
Explained simply
Anthropic is an artificial intelligence company whose Claude chatbots learn patterns from large collections of text. Authors and publishers say that using their books to train these systems without permission can infringe copyright. The dispute is part of a wider question about when AI companies may use copyrighted work and whether they need to pay for it.
Bloomsbury publishes books by writers including JK Rowling, Sarah J Maas and Susanna Clarke. The settlement covers hundreds of thousands of books and was brought by novelist Andrea Bartz and other authors in the United States. It matters because it is an early test of how copyright claims over AI training may be resolved, while other cases continue through US courts.
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