New Delhi: A U.S. federal judge has approved Enthropic's $1.5 billion settlement in a landmark copyright lawsuit that was filed by authors who sued the AI startup for copyright infringement.
The lawsuit filed by non-fiction writers Andrew Barthes, Kirk Wallace Johnson, and Charles Graeber contended that copyrighted works had been acquired by Anthropic from pirate libraries and used to train the company's clowned AI models.
The judge of the California District Court ruled that while training AI on copyrighted material is considered fair use under U.S. copyright law, if the books were acquired legally, Enthropic violated copyright law by storing more than 7 million pirated books in the central library.
The court rejected objections from the plaintiffs who argued that the settlement was too small or excluded certain copyright holders.
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The $1.5 billion is also the largest copyright infringement payout in U.S. history and works out to $3,000 each for about 500,000 books.
Enthropic has said that more than 91% of eligible authors and publishers have already claimed their share of the settlement, while some authors who opted out are continuing with separate lawsuits against the company.
AI training using copyrighted materials is still largely a gray area that most countries, including India, do not have explicit provisions in place when it comes to AI-generated work with no human input.
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Since Enthropic has settled, the lawsuit will not go to U.S. appeals court, which essentially means that it will not be considered a binding precedent in U.S. law.
Under the settlement, Enthropic did not have to legally abide by any; admit to any wrongdoing; or even liability regarding copyright infringement.
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