Yesterday, we reported on Perplexity’s legal troubles after three Japanese publishers filed lawsuits in the Tokyo District Court over the company’s reproduction of news content without consent. That case is part of a broader surge of legal actions aimed at AI companies worldwide.
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Now, artificial intelligence firm Anthropic has reached a settlement in a class action lawsuit brought by U.S. authors who claimed the company used pirated books to train its Claude chatbot. The filing, made Tuesday in a California federal court, marks the first major settlement in the wave of copyright cases targeting AI developers.
Settlement Helps Anthropic Avoid Billions in Damages
The lawsuit centered on allegations that Anthropic downloaded as many as seven million books from pirate sites. Authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson led the suit, arguing their work was copied without consent or payment. In June, U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled that training AI models on books qualifies as fair use. However, he also found that storing millions of pirated books in a central library crossed legal boundaries.
The settlement allows Anthropic to avoid a December trial and sidestep what experts described as a business-ending risk. Under U.S. copyright law, damages for willful infringement can reach $150,000 per work. With millions of titles at stake, liability could have exceeded $1 trillion. Even minimum damages of $750 per book would have topped $5 billion. Both sides must submit requests for preliminary approval by September 5, and the terms remain confidential for now.
This case is drawing close attention as companies like OpenAI, Microsoft (MSFT), and Meta Platforms (META) face similar lawsuits. A structured settlement could shape outcomes across the AI sector and influence valuations. For now, Anthropic has avoided a costly legal fight while keeping its focus on product development.
Claude Comes to Chrome
At the same time, Anthropic has introduced a research preview of its first Chrome extension for Claude. The new tool allows users to interact with websites from a side panel, making it easier to summarize pages or manage information.
The extension is currently available to subscribers of the Max plan, which is priced between $100 and $200 per month. Users can join a waitlist at Claude.ai as the company works on safety improvements. Internal tests showed prompt injection attacks succeeded in 23.6% of cases before new defenses reduced that rate to 11.2%. Even so, Anthropic advises against using the extension for financial or medical tasks.
This launch underscores the growing race in AI-powered browsing, with OpenAI, Google (GOOG), and Perplexity also moving quickly to capture user attention.
Using TipRanks’ Comparison Tool, we reviewed several notable companies developing AI chatbots similar to Anthropic’s AI chatbot, Claude. This comparison provides investors with a clearer view of each stock and the overall AI chatbot market.
