Harry Potter Publisher Bloomsbury Receives Multimillion-Pound Payout in AI Copyright Settlement

The publisher of Harry Potter has received a multimillion-pound payout as a beneficiary of a $1.5bn (£1.12bn) copyright settlement between the AI startup Anthropic and thousands of authors over the use of their protected work to power chatbots.

Bloomsbury, which is home to the bestselling novelists Sarah J Maas and Susanna Clarke as well as JK Rowling, said it had 14,087 titles listed within the settlement, with a proposed compensation of about $3,000 a title.

The London-based company expects to receive the cash from the settlement in instalments, potentially starting in the second half of this fiscal year, with the proceeds to be split with authors.

After a deduction of about 10% for attorney fees and other expenses, Bloomsbury and the group of affected authors can expect to receive about $19m (£14m).

Copyright has become a major battleground in the AI boom because tools such as Anthropic’s suite of Claude chatbots are trained on vast amounts of data taken from the open web, including copyright-protected work such as novels and news articles.

US-based AI companies have argued that using such work is allowed under the legal doctrine of fair use, which allows use of copyrighted work without the owner’s permission in certain circumstances. However, creative professionals and artists around the world have been demanding that AI companies seek permission first – or at least pay them for using their work.

The US district judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín said on Monday that the settlement provided “meaningful relief” to affected authors and publishers. The case began when the novelist Andrea Bartz and two other authors filed the lawsuit in 2024. About 91% of the 482,000 works covered in the suit have been claimed.

The authors’ lead lawyer, Justin Nelson, described it as “the largest known copyright recovery in history”.

It is the first major settlement out of dozens of AI copyright lawsuits being filed in the US on behalf of authors and news outlets, which are still going through the courts.

Anthropic’s deputy general counsel, Aparna Sridhar, said in a written statement after the ruling: “We are pleased that more than 91% of authors and publishers covered by the settlement have claimed their share of the payment, and we’re looking forward to bringing this matter to a close.”

Bloomsbury announced an AI licensing deal last year which allows it to sell academic works to train up generative AI programmes.

The firm said recently that more subject areas were now being considered for AI training. Authors have been given the opportunity to “opt in” to the scheme and will be paid royalties if they decide to let their work be used.