Anthropic settles with authors who sued over use of more than seven million books to train its AI

Anthropic has reached an out-of-court settlement with a group of authors who sued the company over its use of more than seven million books downloaded from shadow libraries to train its AI models. The plaintiffs accused Anthropic of using copyrighted works without permission to train its language models. After a federal judge allowed the case to proceed as a class action in July, Anthropic said it was under existential pressure, citing potential damages in the billions. The settlement was disclosed on August 26, 2025, in a San Francisco court. Anthropic still faces other lawsuits, including cases brought by music publishers and Reddit.