Issue 9_FOCUS from the AOP_September 2025 - Flipbook - Page 6
Earlier in September, the AOP's CEO, Isabelle Doran, Chair, Hamish
Crooks and President, Hamish Crooks were invited to Parliament to
speak with House of Lords representative, Lord Clement-Jones, a
Liberal Democrat peer, former partner of the global law firm DLA
Piper, and champion of the creative industries.
We shared our insights on the unique concerns photographers,
image-makers, and those working alongside, with the increasing
prevalence of generative-AI.
As former Chair of the House of Lords Artificial Intelligence Select
Committee, Co-Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on
Artificial Intelligence, and copyright advocate, Clement-Jones is
uniquely placed to understand the marketplace challenges our
members and wider community face in the current climate.
AOP BUSINESS & LEGAL
VISIT TO HOUSE OF LORDS FOR AOP'S CEO, CHAIR & PRESIDENT
AI DEVELOPER ANTHROPIC'S $1.5 BILLION SETTLEMENT FOR BOOK AUTHORS
In a landmark copyright case, a US federal judge
approved a major settlement between an AI developer
Anthropic and authors who said the company had
stolen nearly half a million books to train its AI model
Claude.
The Bartz v. Anthropic case is to date one of the
largest copyright lawsuits brought by authors in a class
action lawsuit, setting a new standard for AI data
governance and signals a shift towards licensed data
usage in the industry.
Additionally, the AI company has consented to destroy
all of the pirated datasets involved in the case, a move
that's expected to influence how AI developers
approach the sourcing of training data in the future.
Importantly, book authors can include photographers.
Our cursory check showed Tim Flach's Endangered
and Bird books feature, as well as several highprofile Magnum Photographers.
The US Authors Guild gives a very detailed account
about what books authors can do and Anthropic
have issued a Settlement webpage - details below.
Find out more here:
The LibGen Dataset
The Pirate Library Mirror Dataset
Read more from the US Authors Guild here:
What Authors Need to Know About the $1.5
Billion Anthropic Settlement
Anthropic Copyright Settlement Website
The sources of the 'training data' originates from
pirated archives known as LibGen and PiLiMi (Pirate
Library Mirror) datasets, containing more than 7.5
million books. News publication, The Atlantic, first
reported about the LibGen dataset in March 2025,
providing a link for authors to check if their book titles
appear.
AOP BUSINESS & LEGAL
