A US federal judge has granted final approval to Anthropic’s landmark $1.5 billion settlement of a class action lawsuit brought by authors who accused the artificial intelligence company of using their books without permission to train its AI chatbot, Claude.
On Monday, US District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin approved the agreement, making it the largest known settlement in a US copyright case. The judge rejected objections that the settlement amount was insufficient.
The lawsuit is one of dozens filed by authors, publishers and news organisations against technology companies over the use of copyrighted material to train large language models. It is also the first major AI copyright case in the United States to reach a settlement.
The agreement had received preliminary approval from the now-retired Judge William Alsup in September.
“We reached this settlement in 2025, after the court’s landmark ruling that training AI on books is fair use under copyright law — which remains the law today,” Anthropic Deputy General Counsel Aparna Sridhar said in a statement.
Sridhar added that more than 91% of eligible authors and publishers had claimed their share of the settlement and expressed hope that the matter would soon be concluded.
Lead counsel for the authors, Justin Nelson, welcomed the agreement, describing it as a “historic settlement.”