100 authors demand $75M from Anthropic over ‘stolen’ work to train its systems: lawsuit

More than 100 fed-up authors are demanding over $75 million from San Francisco-based AI behemoth Anthropic, which they claim stole their books to train its systems.  

The lawsuit filed in Northern California District Court on June 17 accused Anthropic, which partners with major companies like Microsoft and Amazon, brazenly used more than 500 pirated books — including Oprah-endorsed New York Times bestseller “Get Good with Money” by Tiffany Aliche and the international bestseller “Like Water for Chocolate” by Mexican author Laura Esquivel — to feed its AI.

The company allegedly infringed the copyright of at least 100 authors, including Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, Academy Award-nominated JFK screenwriter Zachary Sklar and Newbery Medal winner Donna Barba Higuera.

The scorned writers are demanding $150,000 per pirated piece, according to the filing. 

The lawsuit alleges that Anthropic exploited a file-sharing program called BitTorrent to access illegal websites Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror to download millions of unauthorized copies of books.

Anthropic, which created the AI assistant Claude, allegedly uploaded with works to its “vast central library” for its AI to use.

They all opted out of the previous class action lawsuit against the company, which resulted in a $1.5 billion settlement in September. 

Authors including Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson sued Anthropic because they claimed the company used their work to train its Claude large language model.

As part of that settlement, Anthropic said it will destroy downloaded copies of books the authors accused it of pirating, and under the deal it could still face infringement claims related to material produced by the company’s AI models.

Each author involved in that case, which involved thousands of writers, received about $3,000 per stolen piece. 

Across all lawsuits, including class action and individual filings, Anthropic allegedly stole about 7 million creative works. 

Unlike the previous lawsuit, Wednesday’s filing not only argues that Anthropic stole copyrighted books, but also redistributed them. 

“Anthropic built the future of artificial intelligence on the books of authors — past, present, and living,” lead lawyer James Bartolemei told The Post. 

“My clients ask a simple question: is that innovation, or is it theft with better marketing? Let a jury decide.”

Anthropic did not return a request for comment.