As readers may have seen in the news, Anthropic was sued in a class action brought by authors and publishers who claimed the company—without permission—copied and stored their books to train the Claude large language model. Many of these works were allegedly sourced from pirated repositories. For the sake of this blog, I’ll refer to the model simply as “Claude,” with emphasis on the “it.”
The case was settled in September 2025, pending the court’s final approval. Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion into a fund to compensate eligible authors and publishers whose books appear on the settlement’s “Works List.” Rights holders on that list may submit a claim for a portion of the fund before the March 30, 2026, deadline. A final approval hearing is scheduled for April 23, 2026. Reuters reported the deal as the first major settlement in a wave of AI lawsuits; similar cases are currently pending against ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Meta AI, and others. In other words, there is more to come.
Initially, I thought $1.5 billion was a lot of money. I was wrong. Anthropic’s current valuation is around $380 billion, and it is forecasting $14 billion in revenue for 2026. With major financial backing from Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and NVIDIA—and almost two years to complete the settlement payments—they aren’t exactly hurting for cash. To me, it looks like they got off cheap. There is no need to shed a tear for Anthropic, nor for the defendants in the other lawsuits.
As an author, I was intrigued. I naturally wondered whether any of my works had been ripped off, so I diligently searched the settlement’s database. However, none of my works were on the list. I’m not sure if that is good news or bad news. Part of me wondered if my writing wasn’t “good enough” for Claude to read, or if it simply wasn’t something the AI wanted to steal.
With my ego slightly bruised, I started thinking more about authors and AI. I admit I’ve used ChatGPT to research topics for my books. Before ChatGPT, I used Google. Both are robust tools that reduce tedious research and the need to spend hours in libraries. I even gave a shout-out to Google in one of my book’s acknowledgments, so I do see the positive side of what they offer.
On the other hand, these companies are making a ton of money—hundreds of billions—offering these services. Whether it’s the “old world” of Google Search or the AI world of Claude, they both rely on digital data. That data includes the works of authors that embody the creativity, sweat, and tears necessary to produce a book, a song, or a painting. Yet, they don’t pay a dime to the creators. They provide information that is largely free to the user, but it’s built on the backs of creators. Nice gig.
I’m conflicted. I like getting my questions answered by AI bots; it’s easy. But I also feel my inquiries contribute to a scheme these companies have perpetuated for years: reaping profits while creators bear the expense.
Will I stop using them? No. That’s not practical in today’s world. Alas, I’ll just have to hope that someday I make it onto a “Works List” and receive a few pennies from the thieves profiting from my effort.