The tech giant Anthropic must pay more than $1.5 billion in a class-action settlement over using pirated books to train its chatbot - the largest copyright settlement in U.S. history. But as thousands of authors wait for their cut, some are accusing publishers of trying to claim a percentage of the payout for books where ownership is disputed.
The settlement, approved in July by a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, covers more than 482,000 books. Anthropic will pay $3,000 per infringed title. A settlement administrator is now trying to determine who holds the rights to many of those works, and authors and publishers have repeatedly staked competing claims.
Where the disputes come from
Mary Rasenberger, chief executive of the Authors Guild, said the settlement process was ripe for misunderstandings. Many disputes trace back to rights reversions - when a publisher returns the rights to a book to its author - that were never properly documented.
"My big fear when this was all set up is that not all publishers keep great records of what books they've reverted rights to," Rasenberger said in an interview on Thursday. "And so you know, they should be taking it off their catalog."
She said she did not believe publishers were acting in bad faith. "I don't see this as a grab by the publishers," she said, adding, "I don't think they're specifically trying to screw any author over."
The scale of the settlement
The $1.5 billion figure dwarfs previous copyright settlements involving technology companies and creative works. The settlement administrator has begun informing authors and publishers when both parties claim ownership of the same title, flagging the discrepancies for resolution before any money changes hands.
The Authors Guild, which says it has more than 18,000 members, has been tracking the process closely. For many titles covered by the agreement, ownership is straightforward and undisputed. The friction centers on a subset of books where contracts are old, records are incomplete, or rights reversions happened informally.
Why this matters for writers
This settlement sets a direct per-work price on AI training data taken without permission - $3,000 per book - which creates a benchmark for future disputes. For writers tracking how their work is valued in the AI era, the outcome also highlights a practical risk: if your rights reversion was never properly recorded, a publisher may still appear as the rights holder in a settlement database.
Writers who want to understand how AI intersects with their craft and their contracts can explore AI for Writers. Those working in film, television, or other scripted formats may also find relevant guidance in the AI for Scriptwriters learning path.
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