Anthropic Sued for $75M: Authors Allege Copyright Theft

Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, faces a new lawsuit from over 100 authors. They accuse Anthropic of using pirated books to train its AI systems. The lawsuit, filed in California, claims Anthropic downloaded more than 500 copyrighted books from online shadow libraries. These books were allegedly used to train Claude's large language models without approval. Specific titles cited include "Get Good with Money" and "Like Water for Chocolate." Notable plaintiffs include Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell and author Donna Barba Higuera. The authors seek up to $150,000 for each infringed work, potentially totaling over $75 million in damages. Anthropic's CEO, Dario Amodei, and co-founder Benjamin Mann are also named. This is not Anthropic's first legal challenge; an earlier class action lawsuit against the company resulted in a $1.5 billion settlement in September 2025. Some authors opted out of that settlement, leading to this new lawsuit. The company also faces a separate class-action lawsuit regarding its Claude Max subscription plans. The bottom line is that AI companies continue to face significant legal challenges concerning the use of copyrighted material for training their systems.