Anthropic Settles $1 Trillion Lawsuit

Even to the AI gods a trillion dollars is a lot of money.

The AI industry has been hoovering up data as fast as the can and some people are not happy about that.

Anthropic is being sued for using authors works without their permission to train their AIs. The judge in the case, William Alsup, is well known and has presided over many high profile tech cases.

While the settlement is only in the proposed phase and we don’t know how the authors are going to react to the settlement proposal, here is the short version.

The judge ruled that their use of authors’ works was transformative enough that it constitutes fair use, so that part of the case is settled unless appealed.

But there is another part of the case which is the problem for Anthrophic.

The judge said that stealing those works, i.e. pirating them using a variety of underground web sites, that is illegal.

So let’s say that they pirated a million books and other works. Probably low, but it is a nice round number.

Fines for pirating start at $750 per infringement. START AT. So let’s say a million works (low estimate) times $750 (low end of the penalty) is $750 million. Okay, that is only a billion dollars, pocket change.

The maximum fine is $250,000 per infringement. Times a million books. THAT is a big number.

But the number isn’t 1 million books, it was 7 million, so somewhere in the middle is a trillion bucks.

IF Anthrophic settles to make this thing go away, then there is no precedent staring them in the face for all of the other lawsuits they are facing. Even so, it does create a starting point for other lawsuits and other AI companies.

And really, for this charge, there really isn’t much of a defense. They got caught doing it. It is illegal. What is the defense?

But we don’t know the terms of the agreement and whether the authors will go for it, so it is not a done deal yet. If need be, I am sure that Anthrophic will sweeten the pot if need be.

So it all boils down to whether the authors agree to the deal. Stay tuned.

Credit: Wired

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