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$1.5 Billion AI copyright settlement

Author

Eddie Yoon
September 05, 2025 • Read time: 7 minutes

👋 Good morning/evening (wherever you are). It’s Friday.

Anthropic will pay $1.5 billion to authors and publishers in what is now the largest copyright settlement in U.S. history.

The deal awards about $3,000 per work to roughly 500,000 authors, following allegations the company built training datasets with pirated copies from shadow libraries like Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror.

In June, a federal judge ruled that using legally acquired books to train AI models was fair use but deemed Anthropic’s reliance on pirated materials illegal.

As part of the agreement, the company will delete the infringing files and still faces potential claims if its models reproduce copyrighted content.

The settlement is pending court approval.

OK let’s keep going ↓

🔥 Creative pulse

In case you missed it, here’s 3 videos worth your time this weekend:

PS: If you’re passionate (and obsessed) about AI creative…guess what?! I just launched an AI creative club. It’s only $5/month. Skip the Big Mac and use it for this instead. I’m serious, you’ll thank me later. Click here to join.

One piece of advice, tip, or connection here could change your life. Learn more.

💡 Here’s what you should know

💰 The numbers

  • Tesla’s board proposed a $1T performance-based pay package for Elon Musk tied to ambitious AI and robotaxi milestones.

  • OpenAI now projects a staggering $115B cash burn through 2029, up $80B from its earlier forecast, reflecting massive infrastructure and chip investments.

  • Meta arranged $26B in off-balance-sheet debt financing for its AI data-center build in Louisiana, anchored by a novel residual-value guarantee to shield investors from depreciation risks.

  • AI and luxury travel are driving bigger hospitality deals, with H1 2025 M&A up 17% in value to $10.8B despite fewer transactions, per KPMG.

  • ProRata.ai closed a $40M Series B and launched "Gist Answers,” an AI search tool empowering publishers to embed summaries and recommendations on their sites.

  • Recall.ai raised $38M in Series B funding at a $250M valuation to expand its API platform for meeting recordings.

  • Hello Patient secured $22.5M in Series A funding to scale its conversational AI solutions for healthcare organizations.

  • Meta is pledging $20M and partnering with Pearson to support educators and students with AI tools.

  • Isotopes AI, led by ex-Scale AI CTO Arun Murthy, raised $20M to launch Aidnn, an AI agent for enterprise data cleaning and analysis.

🧠 Thought starters

Here’s 3 snapshots showing where AI is headed.

Each one has a single line of quick commentary underneath.

Winning with AI means reengineering collaboration across the company, not just adding more technology.

The real leap in AI will come from reshaping human intuition around it so we can see and think beyond what machines can.

The hardest thing to give AI is judgment, the ability to decide what truly matters.

😂 Meme of the day

Thanks for reading,

Eddie

Join the AI Creative Club (you’ll find me there). It’s not only for artists and filmmakers…it’s for anyone who recognizes this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn as much as you can about AI to multiply your impact...to become superhuman. Remember, creativity is just intelligence having fun. This club is for ultra curious people, and if you’ve made it this far…you’re pretty damn curious and probably the smartest one in your circle of friends. It would be my honor to have you in there.

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