The author plaintiffs submitted details to District Court Judge William Alsup proposing a notification and claims process in the hopes that the judge approves the $1.5 billion Anthropic copyright infringement settlement. Those plans, to be followed today by written answers to Judge Alsup’s 34 detailed questions, were filed ahead of the September 25 hearing, and supported by letters from a wide variety of author and publisher organizations and literary agencies. The filing notes, “The parties have worked around the clock since the Court’s initial preliminary approval hearing on September 8 to address the remaining issues the Court raised at that […]
AI
Survey Shows Professionals Use AI, Despite Concerns
Results of a survey by the Book Industry Study Group show that almost half of North American publishing professionals are using AI in their work, but just about all of them have concerns about the technology. Of 559 participants, including publishers, librarians, manufacturers, individual consultants, and retailers, 45 percent say that they are experimenting with AI tools individually and 48 percent report that their organizations use it. Among individuals, the most common uses are for administrative tasks (23 percent) and data analysis (21 percent). Least common uses are in translation (4 percent) and rights and licensing management (2 percent). Organizations […]
Judge Alsup’s 17 Simple Settlement Questions
Further to Monday’s surprise hearing, when Northern California District Court Judge William Alsup declined to provide preliminary approval for the Anthropic copyright infringement settlement due in part to “important questions to be answered in the future,” he issued a new order on Wednesday. That order provides the parties with 17 questions to address with “complete and succinct written answers” by September 23, ahead of the next hearing on the settlement. Judge Alsup poses a variety of complex “scenarios,” regarding everything from disputed or conflicted claims on the same work; works with multiple authors; and works where a third-party like a […]
Authors Sue Apple Over AI Training
Authors Grady Hendrix and Jennifer Roberson have filed a class action lawsuit in the Northern District of California against Apple for copyright infringement using their books to train its LLM. The lawsuit asserts that Apple used the pirated dataset Books3 to train its language models, and that the company’s Applebot software scraped pirate sites to obtain copyrighted books. It also notes that Apple entered a licensing deal with Shutterstock to train its genAI tools, but not with authors. “Apple did not compensate creators for use of their copyrighted works and concealed the sources of their training datasets to evade legal […]
Powell’s Under Fire For AI Merch Design
Critics have asserted online that Powell’s Books in Portland used AI to create designs that appear on shirts and mugs. One shows an illustration of a wolf standing on top of books, the spines of which show both binding and pages. One online comment claims that employees complained about the design before the shirts were printed, but “were given the runaround.” “Powell’s workers have been voicing concerns about the use of AI in these designs for months and company leadership has been unmoved… maybe feedback from customers and book industry peers will move them?” the Powell’s workers’ union, ILWU Local […]
Anthropic Settles With Authors For $1.5 Billion
Anthropic has settled the copyright infringement lawsuit brought by a class of authors for at least $1.5 billion, plus interest. The proposed settlement, once approved by the court, will be split among the rightsholders of all of the books included in the class after administration and lawyers’ fees and expenses, and will pay out in four installments, with the full settlement amount being paid by Anthropic over two years. Anthropic is paying $3,000 for each infringed work with a registered US copyright, and this huge win for creators comprises the “the largest publicly reported copyright recovery in history” in the […]