00:00Anthropic, the company behind the artificial intelligence chatbot known as Claude, has agreed to pay authors $1.5 billion in what would be the largest copyright settlement in U.S. history.
00:12But the company may still face a trial over whether it stole the author's works to train Claude.
00:17A federal judge lambasted the proposed settlement, saying that authors may not understand the full implications of the agreement they struck with the Amazon-backed AI giant Anthropic.
00:31Straight Arrow News spoke about the case with Elucio Zafar of Creation Rights, a company that protects artists' intellectual property.
00:39The primary focus has always been uncompensated use.
00:43Most artists want recognition, and from that recognition, they also want their royalties that come around that as well.
00:52So licensing their work or selling their work or transferring that work to a different auction house, for example.
00:57So I think that's the primary concern by nearly everybody underneath the umbrella of the creative industries.
01:03The class of authors accuse Anthropic of stealing their books to train Claude,
01:08While the federal judge ruled in June that it is not illegal to take the books to use for training or educational purposes,
01:15what may not be legal is how Anthropic obtained the books, including from pirate websites.
01:21The case has broad implications for authors and other creators.
01:25This is people's work. This is people's art. This is people's licenses and royalties.
01:30This is what they work their life sometimes to make an impact in society, and that's what contributes to just like our cultural knowledge.
01:37And that's kind of being threatened now by AI companies, tech companies from Silicon Valley, without actually compensating original authors.
01:45The judge said he is nowhere close to approving the settlement and had scheduled a hearing for September 25th.
01:52There are 40 similar lawsuits in the U.S. focused on AI and artists' rights, many of which also include artists asking for compensation.
02:01So the Anthropic case could set the tone as the courts usher in a new era of technology, artificial intelligence, and how artists' work can legally be used.
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