Humanity, a leading artificial intelligence company, has agreed to pay at least $1.5 billion to resolve copyright infringement lawsuits filed by a group of authors who alleged that the platform illegally used copyright to train large-scale language models, according to court documents.
“If approved, this landmark settlement will be the largest publicly reported restoration of copyright in history, greater than any individual copyright cases sued for other copyright class action settlements or final decisions,” said Justin Nelson, the author's attorney.
The lawsuit, filed last year in federal court in California, focused on roughly 500,000 published works. The proposed settlement amounts to a total recovery of $3,000 per job, Nelson said in a memorandum to the judge in the case.
“The results are nothing but surprising,” Nelson added.
In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs allegedly “committed” “massive copyright infringement” by downloading and “commercially using” books allegedly obtained from pirated copies of websites such as the Library's Genesis and the Pirate Library's Mirror.
Humanity had argued that what it was doing was under “fair use” under US copyright law. In late June, a federal judge assigned to the case determined that human actions constituted fair use because the final outcome was “very transformative.”
However, that decision from Judge William Alsup carried a significant asterisk. He declared that downloading copies of famous books was not a fair use.
“In June, the district court issued a groundbreaking ruling on AI development and copyright law, finding that humanity's approach to training AI models constitutes fair use,” said Aparna Sridhar, human assistant adviser.
“Today's settlement will resolve the remaining legacy claims of the plaintiffs, if approved. We are working to develop safe AI systems that will help people and organizations expand their capabilities, advance scientific discoveries, and solve complex problems.” Sridhar has been added.
The lawsuit was originally filed by three writers, Andrea Burtz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson. Burts is a journalist and novelist. Graeber and Johnson are journalists who have published non-fiction books.
Bartz, Graeber, and Johnson did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
The settlement could shape the trajectory of other pending litigation between the AI platform and the published author.
John Grisham, “Game of Thrones” writers George R.R. Martin and Jodi Picoll are part of a group of nearly 20 bestselling authors who sued Open Ally, who use their works to train chat grit and other tools using “massive theft.”
According to Nelson, humanity agreed to make four payments to the Settlement Fund, starting with a $300 million payment within five business days of court sign-off on terms.
Nelson's memo to Alsup said the proposed $1.5 billion payments were the “minimum” of the settlement. “If the work list ultimately exceeds 500,000 works, humanity will pay an additional $3,000 for each work added to the list of over 500,000 works.”
