A federal judge approved Anthropic's $1.5-billion settlement with authors on Monday, marking the largest copyright settlement in U.S. history. Federal Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin in Oakland granted final approval of the settlement, which requires Anthropic to pay authors whose pirated books it used to train its AI. More than 500,000 authors and publishers were part of the class-action lawsuit and will receive an estimated $3,000 per eligible work; their lawyers were awarded $101.6 million in fees. In 2024, a group of authors sued Anthropic, arguing the company pirated hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books. U.S. District Judge William Alsup had previously found that while using books to train AI was allowed under fair-use norms, Anthropic's acquisition of books from pirated libraries without permission was not. Some 350 authors opted out of the settlement, betting they can recover more through individual litigation.