[SAN FRANCISCO] Humanity will pay at least US$1.5 billion to resolve US class action lawsuits using pirated books to train artificial intelligence (AI) models, according to court documents filed Friday (September 5).
“This groundbreaking settlement far outweighs other known copyright restorations,” said Justin Nelson, the plaintiff's lawyer. “This is the first time in the AI era.”
The settlement comes from a class action lawsuit filed by authors Andrea Burtz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson.
With a partial victory for humanity, U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled in June that, whether they purchased the company's Claude AI model books or pirates, changed the works that constituted “fair use” under the law.
“The technology in question was one of the most transformative things that many of us could see in our lifetimes,” Alsup wrote in his decision, comparing how humans learn by reading AI training.
However, Alsup rejected humanity's bid for blanket protection and determined that the company's practice of downloading millions of pirated copies to build a permanent digital library was not justified by fair use protection.
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“We are continuing to be committed to developing safe AI systems that help people and organizations expand their capabilities, advance scientific discoveries and solve complex problems,” Aparna Sridhar, adviser to the vice president of humanity, said in an AFP investigation.
Thousands of books
According to legal filings, the settlement covers approximately 500,000 books, translated to approximately USD 3,000 per work, four times the minimum statutory damages under US copyright law.
Under the contract, humanity destroys original pirated files and copies created, but the company retains the rights to books it legally purchased and scanned.
“This settlement has serious consequences of sending a strong message to the AI industry, pirated the author's work to train AI, and stealing people who can't afford it,” Author Guild CEO Mary Raysenberger said in a statement in support of the deal.
Settlements that require judicial approval are because AI companies face increased legal pressure than training practices.
Several lawsuits against companies, including Openai, Meta and others, are pending, claiming that cutting off copyrighted content without permission violates intellectual property laws.
San Francisco-based humanity announced this week that it raised US$13 billion in funding valued the AI startup at US$183 billion.
Use capital to expand capacity, deepen safety research and support international expansion.
Humanity is competing with generative AI products from Google, Openai, Meta and Microsoft in a race that is expected to attract hundreds of millions of US dollars in investments over the next few years.
Heavy support from Amazon, humanity was founded in 2021 by former Openai executives and has grown rapidly since the first release of Claude in early 2023, bringing annual returns of USD 5 billion since the beginning of this year. AFP
