Anthropic has agreed to a $1.5 billion class-action settlement in the case Bartz v. Anthropic after being caught using pirated books to train its Claude AI model. The settlement covers approximately 500,000 copyrighted works and will pay qualifying US-registered rightsholders roughly $3,000 per title. The Irish Writers’ Union has reached its own arrangement with Anthropic and is advising Irish authors on how to file claims, viewing the case as a potential precedent for European copyright enforcement. The lawsuit alleged that Anthropic downloaded books from Library Genesis (LibGen) and Pirate Library Mirror (PiLiMi) to feed its language models. A US District Court ruled that training AI on legally acquired material could qualify as fair use, but downloading copyrighted works from pirate sites is plain infringement. As part of the settlement, Anthropic must destroy the pirated datasets used in training. Final court approval is expected around mid-2026.