At 84, veteran mogul John Malone is still a power broker, hinting at “further consolidation in the media industry” following a recent sit down with David Ellison. Should we be on the lookout for a Warner–Paramount merger? Meanwhile in Vegas, the Sphere’s $100 million Wizard of Oz reimagining leans on AI to expand the visuals and even slip in cameos of David Zaslav and James Dolan. The Directors Guild did not take kindly to the stunt. Partners in Banter Kim Masters and Matt Belloni pull back the curtain on the Sphere’s Emerald City sideshow.

Plus, Masters speaks with Runway co-founder Cristóbal Valenzuela about the role of artificial intelligence in Hollywood. The Chilean-born developer acknowledges that AI may lead to some job losses, but he argues it will ultimately benefit filmmakers. He explains why studios including Lionsgate, Netflix, and Disney are already using Runway’s tools. Plus, he compares the current backlash against AI to the upheaval that followed the introduction of sound in film.

Anthropic told a San Francisco federal judge on Friday that it has agreed to pay $1.5 billion US to settle a class-action lawsuit from a group of authors who accused the artificial intelligence company of using pirated copies of their books to train its AI chatbot, Claude, without permission.

Anthropic and the plaintiffs in a court filing asked U.S. District Judge William Alsup to approve the settlement, after announcing the agreement in August without disclosing the terms or amount.

“If approved, this landmark settlement will be the largest publicly reported copyright recovery in history, larger than any other copyright class action settlement or any individual copyright case litigated to final judgment,” the plaintiffs said in the filing.

The proposed deal marks the first settlement in a string of lawsuits against tech companies including OpenAI, Microsoft and Meta Platforms over their use of copyrighted material to train generative AI systems.

As part of the settlement, Anthropic said it will destroy downloaded copies of books acquired through pirating sites LibGen and PiLiMi (Pirate Library Mirror). Under the deal it could still face infringement claims related to material produced by the company’s AI models.

In a statement, Anthropic said the company is “committed to developing safe AI systems that help people and organizations extend their capabilities, advance scientific discovery, and solve complex problems.” The agreement does not include an admission of liability.

“This historic settlement is a vital step in acknowledging that AI companies cannot simply steal authors’ creative work to build their AI just because they need books to develop quality LLMs,” Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger said in a statement.

“These vastly rich companies, worth billions, stole from those earning a median income of barely $20,000 [US] a year. This settlement sends a clear message that AI companies must pay for the books they use just as they pay for the other essential components of their LLMs.”

Although an estimated seven million books were downloaded by Anthropic from piracy sites, according to the Authors Guild, only around 500,000 works are covered in the class action, meaning the settlement amounts to roughly $3,000 US per author. 

Writers Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson filed the class action against Anthropic last year. They argued that the company, which is backed by Amazon and Alphabet, unlawfully used millions of pirated books to teach its AI assistant Claude to respond to human prompts.

Creative work stolen

The writers’ allegations echoed dozens of other lawsuits brought by authors, news outlets, visual artists and others who say that tech companies stole their work to use in AI training.

The companies have argued their systems make fair use of copyrighted material to create new, transformative content.

Alsup ruled in June that Anthropic made fair use of the books to train Claude, but found that the company violated their rights by saving more than seven million pirated books to a “central library” that would not necessarily be used for that purpose.

WATCH | What’s behind Canadian class-action lawsuits launched gainst tech giants: 

B.C. author leads lawsuits alleging big tech used writers’ works to train AI

A best-selling Vancouver author has launched a class-action lawsuit against NVIDIA, Meta and two other tech giants.
J.B. MacKinnon claims that books he and other Canadian authors wrote, were illegally used to train artificial intelligence models.

A trial was scheduled to begin in December to determine how much Anthropic owed for the alleged piracy, with potential damages ranging into the hundreds of billions of dollars.

The pivotal fair-use question is still being debated in other AI copyright cases. 

Vancouver author J.B. MacKinnon recently launched class-action lawsuits against NVIDIA, Meta, Anthropic and Databricks Inc. in B.C. Supreme Court, alleging that his and other Canadian authors’ works have been used illegally for AI training. 

Another San Francisco judge hearing a similar ongoing lawsuit against Meta ruled shortly after Alsup’s decision that using copyrighted work without permission to train AI would be unlawful in “many circumstances.”

Cristóbal Valenzuela is the co-founder of AI firm Runway — which is bound to make plenty of people in Hollywood bristle. But he says studios and independent filmmakers are regularly using AI tools. And while he concedes that artificial intelligence will lead to some job losses, he argues that ultimately it will be a boon to filmmakers. 

“AI is not The Terminator. AI is not Black Mirror. AI is not God. It’s a technology that can be very powerful for you to leverage,” Valenzuela clarifies. “It has challenges like any other technology, but you are in control. Humans are in control, like they’ve always been.”

Valenzuela discusses why studios like Lionsgate, Netflix, and Disney are already using his company’s tools. The Chilean-born developer also compares the current backlash against AI to another major industry upheaval: the arrival of sound in film.