A US judge has approved a $1.5 billion (£1.18 billion) settlement between Anthropic and a class of authors, closing the largest copyright class-action ever certified and the largest copyright settlement on record. The case arose after a court ruled that Anthropic's use of books to train its AI models was fair use, but that it likely infringed copyright by pirating some works in the process. A small number of authors had sought to block or opt out of the deal late, arguing lawyers' fees were excessive and payouts too low, but US District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín dismissed these objections as unfounded.

Martínez-Olguín noted that roughly 95% of the class received notice and about 91% of affected authors and publishers had already filed claims, with only 350 opting out and 54 raising objections or late opt-out requests. Authors will receive an estimated $3,000 per work, described by the judge as four times the statutory minimum, covering some 506,194 works. She also trimmed the fees sought by lawyers from an initial 20% (later reduced to 12.5%, or about $187 million) down to under 7%, roughly $101 million, and cut the lead plaintiffs' proposed service awards from $50,000 to $15,000 each, calling the higher figures unreasonable.