Bloomsbury to share in $1.5bn Anthropic AI copyright settlement
Bloomsbury Publishing is set to receive a payout after a US District Court formally approved the landmark $1.5 billion settlement in the class action lawsuit Bartz et al. v. Anthropic, one of the most significant copyright cases of the generative AI era.
The case centred on allegations that AI company Anthropic used millions of copyrighted books, obtained from pirate repositories, to train its Claude family of large language models without purchasing or licensing the works.
Bloomsbury confirmed that it is among the beneficiaries of the settlement and expects to begin receiving payments during the second half of its current financial year.
According to the publisher, the court has identified 14,087 Bloomsbury titles as falling within the scope of the settlement. Compensation is expected to amount to approximately $3,000 per title, before legal fees and other court-approved deductions, with the remaining payment split equally between the publisher and the author.
The lawsuit was brought by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson, who alleged that Anthropic downloaded millions of books from online piracy sites, including Library Genesis (LibGen) and Pirate Library Mirror (PiLiMi), to build its AI models. While Anthropic denied wrongdoing, it agreed to settle the case, resulting in what is believed to be the largest copyright settlement involving generative AI to date.