Tech Giants Score Big Again: $1.5B Anthropic Settlement Favors Corporations Over Writers

Breaking News: Anthropic's $1.5B Copyright Settlement Sparks Outrage Among Writers A historic $1.5 billion settlement has been reached in the class action lawsuit Bartz v. Anthropic, but it's not a victory for authors as many had hoped. Instead, it marks another win for tech companies that are racing to amass written material to train their Large Language Models (LLMs). The settlement affects around half a million writers who will receive at least $3,000 each. Timeline of Events: The lawsuit was filed in 2022 against Anthropic, the company behind AI chat product Claude. The suit alleged that Anthropic had pirated millions of books from shadow libraries and fed them into its AI without permission. The settlement is the largest payout in U.S. copyright law history. Immediate Impact: The settlement has sparked outrage among writers who feel they are being compensated for their work, but not valued as creators. Many argue that this settlement will only encourage tech companies to continue scraping copyrighted material from the internet. Background Context: Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Claude rely on vast amounts of written data to become more sophisticated. However, this has raised concerns about copyright infringement and the impact on creative industries. Dozens of lawsuits have been filed against companies like Meta, Google, OpenAI, and Midjourney over the legality of training AI on copyrighted works. What Happens Next: The settlement will be distributed among eligible writers in the coming months. However, this development has sparked a larger conversation about the ethics of AI development and the need for stronger copyright protections. As LLMs continue to advance, it's clear that the debate over their impact on society is far from over. *This story is developing. Information compiled from Techcrunch reporting.*