A California federal judge has ordered changes to the notice emails being sent to members of a class of writers who secured a $1.5 billion settlement of copyright infringement claims against artificial intelligence firm Anthropic, saying the current wording does not give "equal dignity" to the option of opting out of the settlement versus filing a claim.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup said in a Tuesday order that the current notices steer class members toward filing a claim before mentioning the opt-out option.

The case is one of many that have hit the courts accusing an AI company of using copyrighted material to train large language models. A group of authors said Anthropic had used their books to train the LLM that powers the chatbot Claude. Judge Alsup ruled that the books Anthropic legally purchased could fall under fair use, but said the class could proceed on claims that the startup had pirated large numbers of books. The parties later settled for $1.5 billion.

The judge said there were previously ordered changes that had still not been made to materials being mailed to class members. A prior order required counsel to add in the notices that the settlement documents had to be personally signed by the class member, and to strike a portion saying they could be inked by an authorized representative.

Requests for exclusion, reinclusion, objections and claims had to be personally signed by class members, if they are living individuals, Judge Alsup said.

The judge said there were several "obvious errors" that previous orders had addressed that had not been remedied. These included breaking out "the lengthy lists of requirements now embedded in paragraphs ... so they can be consumed easily as checklists like the others," and fixing a series of typos.

Judge Alsup denied a request from the authors to allow them to remove their real names from the settlement website in favor of pen names. The judge approved a passage to be added to the notices explaining that the information available on the site was taken from publicly available sources, and that "such records often already list an author's real name and the author's pen name." The revision informs class members that they must provide "compelling reasons" to remove their real names.

Judge Alsup said a "curative statement" should be added to the website for people who might have visited prior to his order to explain what the added clarifications were.

"This is final. Do not argue with it, please," the judge said. "Implement these requirements, then disseminate the long-form notice with buckslip."

On Nov. 13, Judge Alsup criticized Arizona law firm ClaimsHero Holdings LLC for encouraging authors to opt out of the settlement and suggesting the move could get class members better results.

Judge Alsup said all class members have the right to opt out, but added that he "urges any class members tempted by such an encouragement or advertisement to first study the class notice and the reasons for the settlement, and to study the track record of any such law firm when it comes to actual litigation in any state or federal court."

An attorney for the authors declined to comment Wednesday, and counsel for Anthropic did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The authors and publishers are represented by Rachel Geman, Jacob S. Miller, Danna Z. Elmasry, Daniel M. Hutchinson, Jallé H. Dafa, Amelia Haselkorn and Betsy A. Sugar of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP, Justin A. Nelson, Alejandra C. Salinas, Rohit D. Nath, Michael Adamson, J. Craig Smyser and Samir H. Doshi of Susman Godfrey LLP, Scott J. Shoulder and CeCe M. Cole of Cowan DeBaets Abrahams & Sheppard LLP, Jay Edelson of Edelson PC, and Matthew J. Oppenheim of Oppenheim + Zebrak LLP.

Anthropic is represented by Douglas A. Winthrop, Joseph Farris, Jessica L. Gillotte, Estayvaine Bragg, Angel T. Nakamura, Oscar Ramallo and Allyson Myers of Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP, Mark Lemley of Lex Lumina LLP, and Joseph R. Wetzel and Andrew M. Gass of Latham & Watkins LLP.

The case is Bartz et al. v. Anthropic PBC, case number 3:24-cv-05417, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.