Anthropic to pay authors $1.5B to settle lawsuit over pirated chatbot training material

Thriller novelist Andrea Bartz is photographed in her home Thursday in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Richard Drew/AP

Richard Drew/AP

NEW YORK — Artificial intelligence company Anthropic has agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit by book authors who say the company took pirated copies of their works to train its chatbot.

The landmark settlement, if approved by a judge as soon as Monday, could mark a turning point in legal battles between AI companies and the writers, visual artists and other creative professionals who accuse them of copyright infringement.