Anthropic will pay at least $1.5 billion to settle a US class action lawsuit over allegedly using pirated books to train its artificial intelligence models, according to court documents filed Friday.

“This landmark settlement far surpasses any other known copyright recovery,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Justin Nelson. “It is the first of its kind in the AI era.”

The settlement stems from a class-action lawsuit filed by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson, who accused Anthropic of illegally copying their books to train Claude, the company’s AI chatbot that rivals ChatGPT.

In a partial victory for Anthropic, US District Court Judge William Alsup ruled in June that the company’s training of its Claude AI models with books—whether bought or pirated—so transformed the works that it constituted “fair use” under the law.

“The technology at issue was among the most transformative many of us will see in our lifetimes,” Alsup wrote in his decision, comparing AI training to how humans learn by reading books.

However, Alsup rejected Anthropic’s bid for blanket protection, ruling that the company’s practice of downloading millions of pirated books to build a permanent digital library was not justified by fair use protections.

“We remain committed to developing safe AI systems that help people and organizations extend their capabilities, advance scientific discovery, and solve complex problems,” Anthropic deputy general counsel Aparna Sridhar said in response to an AFP inquiry.

San Francisco-based Anthropic announced this week that it raised $13 billion in a funding round valuing the AI startup at $183 billion.

Anthropic competes with generative artificial intelligence offerings from Google, OpenAI, Meta, and Microsoft in a race that is expected to attract hundreds of billions of dollars in investment over the next few years.

Thousands of books

According to the legal filing, the settlement covers approximately 500,000 books, translating to roughly $3,000 per work—four times the minimum statutory damages under US copyright law.

Under the agreement, Anthropic will destroy the original pirated files and any copies made, though the company retains rights to books it legally purchased and scanned.

“This settlement sends a strong message to the AI industry that there are serious consequences when they pirate authors’ works to train their AI, robbing those least able to afford it,” said Mary Rasenberger, CEO of the Authors Guild, in a statement supporting the deal.

The settlement, which requires judicial approval, comes as AI companies face growing legal pressure over their training practices.

A US judge in June handed Meta a victory over authors who accused the tech giant of violating copyright law by training Llama AI on their creations without permission.

District Court Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco ruled that Meta’s use of the works to train its AI model was “transformative” enough to constitute “fair use” under copyright law.

Apple Intelligence

Meanwhile, Apple on Friday was targeted with a lawsuit by a pair of US authors accusing the iPhone maker of using pirated books to train generative AI built into its lineup of devices.

The tech titan’s suite of capabilities called “Apple Intelligence” is part of a move to show it is not being left behind in the AI race.

“To train the generative-AI models that are part of Apple Intelligence, Apple first amassed an enormous library of data,” read the suit.

“Part of Apple’s data library includes copyrighted works—including books created by plaintiffs—that were copied without author consent, credit, or compensation.”

Apple “scraped” works from sources including “shadow libraries” stocked with pirated books, the suit contends.

Apple did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

The suit filed against Apple by Grady Hendrix, author of “My Best Friend’s Exorcism,” and Jennifer Roberson of Arizon, whose books include “Sword-Bound,” seeks class action status.

© 2025 AFP

Enter the MagSafe Accessory World

I have been testing MagSafe accessories for years, and you should totally take advantage of the vast ecosystem with your new Pixel. Whether you want a magnetic wallet or phone tripod, we have plenty of WIRED-tested recommendations in our guides. Most of them should work without fail on the Pixel 10 series. Here they are:

Other Cases and Accessories We Like

Mous Clarity Pixelsnap Case for $70: This is my second favorite clear case after Dbrand’s Ghost 2.0. There’s a thick bumper around the phone to absorb impacts, a solid magnetic connection, and a nice lip around the screen to keep it off the ground. The buttons are clicky, too.

OtterBox Symmetry Clear Pixelsnap Case for $60: This is a nice, clear case that’s also Pixelsnap-certified. The cutouts are accurate, the edges are slightly raised over the screen, and it offers a decent grip. If you prefer a completely clear case without a separate bumper, this will satisfy.

Spigen Parallax, Nano Pop, and Liquid Air Pixelsnap Cases for $19: I’ve tried several Spigen cases, and the Rugged Armor is my favorite this year (see above). These other options have different designs, but they’re solid cases for the money. I found the Parallax slippery, and the sides also felt a bit cheap. The Nano Pop had a decently grippy texture on the edges, but the Liquid Air is one of my favorite Spigen designs. The buttons are just a little stiffer than I’d like. These are minor nitpicks, though. They’re great cases for under $20, especially considering they’re all Made for Google-certified.

Spigen GlasTR EZ Fit Tempered Glass Screen Protector for $20 (2 Pack): This is the best bang for your buck when it comes to screen protection. Spigen gives you two in the box, and its application tool makes it impossible to make a mistake when installing the tempered glass protector. There’s even a squeegee tool to push out air bubbles. All that for $20.

UAG Pathfinder Pixelsnap Case for $60: Someone probably likes how this case looks. That person is not me, but clearly, there’s a market for this styling. If you fall in that camp, there’s not much to complain about the Pathfinder, except I found the buttons slightly stiffer than usual. It checks off all the other boxes, with a raised lip over the screen, but I just don’t find it that attractive (sorry).

UAG Glass Shield Screen Protector for $40: UAG includes the usual wet wipe, dust removal sticker, and microfiber cloth, and there’s a plastic shell you place on top of your Pixel to use as a guide when applying the tempered glass screen protector. It’s not the easiest method I’ve tried, as there’s room for some error (and potential to get grime or a smudge on the underside as you apply), but it was fairly quick and painless, and the air bubbles disappeared quickly.

Burga Tough Case for $50: This is one of the few non-magnetic cases I’ve tested for the Pixel 10 series. Burga doesn’t have its Pixel 10 cases listed on the website yet, but says it plans to add them soon. If you absolutely don’t care for Qi2 and magnets in these phones, this is a perfectly fine case, and Burga has tons of designs you can choose from. The exterior is a hard plastic shell, but the phone is wrapped in a soft rubbery shell that absorbs impacts. The buttons are fairly clicky—not the most responsive—and there’s a solid lip around the screen.

Poetic Guardian and Poetic Revolution Case for $25: Poetic sent me two of its cases to test for the Pixel 10 series. One thing to note is that Poetic includes a screen protector that embeds itself into the case, like old-school cases that offered full protection. Unfortunately, the screen protector quality is really not great (there’s a visible circle cutout for the fingerprint sensor, and it looks jarring. Sliding your finger on it just doesn’t feel great. You can thankfully opt not to use it; use the plastic frame that comes in the box instead. The Revolution doesn’t have any magnets but has a built-in kickstand and a cover that can completely protect your cameras; I find this a little extreme, so I don’t care for it. It also, in my humble opinion, looks hideous. The Guardian looks much better, with a thick bumper, raised edges, and a covered port. The buttons are a little stiff, but at least it has built-in magnets for Qi2 (not certified).

Princeton engineers are twisting, stretching and creasing structures to create a new type of origami, one that changes its shape and properties in response to changing circumstances. The new method could be useful for prosthetics, antennas and other devices.

When a device needs to fit into a compact space—in a spacecraft or a surgical device—and then unfold into an intricate shape, origami often provides a solution. But most origami shapes are locked into a few set patterns once their folds are made.

A Princeton team led by Glaucio Paulino wanted to create structures that react to an outside stimulus in multiple ways, not just in a few patterned responses. To accomplish this, the team turned to a technique called geometric frustration.

An origami-based structure will fold and twist in certain ways based on the structure’s material properties and its geometry. When engineers prevent that natural motion, they call it “frustrating” the structure. Normally, engineers have to work around frustration, but in this case it expands their toolkit.

“Sometimes frustration is desirable,” said Paulino, the Margareta Engman Augustine Professor of Engineering at Princeton. Frustration allows designers to cause the origami to follow patterns not normally allowed by its geometry. “This opens up many possibilities of things we could engineer that we could never do before.”

In an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers described how they added elastic components to cylindrical origami structures called Kresling cells. The elastic sections act like springs. By controlling how the springs respond to a force, the researchers were able to execute precise folding patterns of the cells that were not feasible without the springs.

Paulino said springs allow designers to introduce internal energy into the folded structure using pre-stress. This pre-stress allows the origami to respond in ways that are not possible with ordinary materials. For example, engineers can introduce a twisting spring that rotates the origami in a specific fashion; they can add a spring along the structure’s main axis that either squeezes the structure into a compact shape or stretches it out.

By combining frustrated cells in stacks, the engineers were able to develop materials with fine control over material properties like stiffness. For example, a prosthetic leg built with this system can stiffen to provide support while walking on a flat surface but reconfigure into a more flexible state for climbing stairs. The designers could also create adjustable metasurfaces that are used in antennas and optics.

“Exploiting frustration lets us reprogram origami mechanics, for instance turning random Kresling folding into precise, controllable sequences and opening new possibilities for advanced applications,” said Diego Misseroni, a collaborator from the University of Trento.

“We can program any mechanical property that we wish, so this is quite unique,” said Tuo Zhao, a postdoctoral researcher in Paulino’s group.

The team sees potential impact for this type of structure in many fields. This frustrated origami system can combine with other techniques and materials that can change on demand, according to Shixi Zang, postdoctoral researcher and first author of the paper. One example is using frustrated origami to develop responsive, modular devices like a passive sunshade that opens and closes based on the ambient temperature.