Following a September 25 hearing, U.S. District Judge William Alsup gave preliminarily approval to $1.5 billion settlement in the class action lawsuit in which authors charged AI giant Anthropic with copyright infringement for using pirated books to train its large language models.

Anthropic and attorneys representing the authors in Bartz et al. v. Anthropic had reached an agreement in late August, but Judge Alsup delayed his approval at a September 8 hearing, telling attorneys he wanted to hear how they intended to notify all members of the class about the agreement and also wanted clearer definitions on how eligible authors and publishers would split the award. In materials filed earlier this week, attorneys laid out plans for an ambitious publicity campaign to alert anyone who may be party to the lawsuit, and in his ruling Alsup said he expected the attorneys to continue “bird dogging” the process to ensure a long-term successful result. Alsup endorsed the agreement as "fair, reasonable, and adequate”

Judge Alsup also blessed the payment process under which authors and publishers of trade books would split the award, and in the case of education titles, the settlement requires the claimant to make a good-faith representation regarding the percentage of recovery that the claimant is entitled to receive.

All parties put the amount each work is eligible to receive at $3,000, a figure arrived at after administration fees, lawyers’ fees, and expenses are paid. While as many as seven million works were initially thought to be eligible to receive a payout, most did not meet eligibility requires, leaving roughly 482,000 works that qualified for the award.

Representatives from both the Association of American Publishers and Authors Guild praised the decision, and both organizations said they will stay involved in notifying parties of the agreement.

“The settlement marks a milestone in authors’ fights against AI companies’ theft of their works,” the Guild said in a statement. “It sends a clear signal to AI companies that infringement of authors’ rights comes at a steep price and will undoubtedly push AI companies towards acquiring the books they want legally, through licensing. The case is also significant in that it serves as an example of how class actions can be a successful vehicle for seeking justice for mass copyright infringement.”

The Guild noted that in the coming weeks, it will continue to work with the class counsel to make sure all authors whose works are part of the settlement are reached and understand their rights.

For her part, AAP CEO and president Maria Pallante said the settlement “is a major step in the right direction in holding AI developers accountable for reckless and unabashed infringement. Piracy is an astonishingly poor decision for a tech company, and—as the settlement figure demonstrates—an expensive one."

Pallante added that as it becomes clearer and clearer that AI companies routinely help themselves to the intellectual property of authors and publishers, “we hope that courts will recognize that the unlicensed, carte blanche use of copyrighted works for AI training is not transformative and not fair use.”

Anthropic issued a rare comment on the case, telling the Associated Press that the decision “will allow us to focus on developing safe AI systems that help people and organizations extend their capabilities, advance scientific discovery, and solve complex problems.”

Aparna Sridhar, deputy general counsel at Anthropic, stressed that the ruling pertained to only one part of the original case, noting that Alsup ruled that AI training is transformative fair use, but that copying books from pirate sites was not.

Final approval of the agreement is expected some time next year, but where that will happen is unclear. In the September 25 hearing, Alsup confirmed reports he plans to retire at the end of the year.