The publisher of Harry Potter is to receive a multimillion-pound payout over a copyright settlement between the AI startup Anthropic and thousands of authors after using pirated copies of their works to train its Claude chatbot.
Bloomsbury, which is home to book by bestselling novelists Sarah J. Maas and Susanna Clarke as well as JK Rowling, is a beneficiary of the $1.5bn (£1.12bn) settlement.
It said it had 14,087 titles listed within the settlement, with a proposed compensation of about $3,000 (around £2,250) a title.
The London-based company added that it expects to receive the money in instalments, potentially starting in the second half of this financial year, with the proceeds to be shared with authors.
District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín said in a ruling on Monday that the class-action settlement provides “meaningful relief” to affected authors and publishers.
About 91% of the more than 482,000 books covered by the settlement have been claimed by authors or publishers who are now due payment.
Anthropic makes Claude AI. Credit: iStock
The plaintiffs’ attorney Justin Nelson said the agreement represented “the largest known copyright recovery in history”, adding: “We look forward to making distributions to the class as promptly as possible.”
US District Judge William Alsup granted preliminary approval for the settlement in San Francisco federal court last September before retiring.
Last summer, Alsup issued a mixed ruling, finding that training AI chatbots on copyrighted books was not illegal but that Anthropic had wrongfully acquired millions of books through pirate websites.
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Anthropic’s deputy general counsel, Aparna Sridhar, described that ruling as a landmark decision showing “that training AI on books is fair use under copyright law”.
“We are pleased that more than 91% of authors and publishers covered by the settlement have claimed their share of the payment, and we’re looking forward to bringing this matter to a close,” Sridhar said in a statement.
Bestselling thriller writer Andrea Bartz first brought the lawsuit with two other authors in 2024.
It is the first major settlement in dozens of AI copyright cases still making their way through the courts.
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