Authors seeking payouts from Anthropic’s $1.5 billion copyright settlement say publishers and literary agencies are claiming payments they may not be entitled to receive. The settlement followed a judge’s ruling that training AI models on copyrighted material can qualify as fair use (limited lawful use of copyrighted works), while pirating that material does not. Final approval in July cleared payments for authors of nearly 500,000 titles, with $3,000 due for each pirated work. Authors and publishers generally split payments 50-50 for books still in print under traditional publishing contracts, while authors should receive the full amount for self-published books or works whose rights reverted after going out of print. Complaints described by April Henry, Victoria Strauss, Courtney Milan and Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger include publishers claiming books after rights reversion, seeking the full payment instead of 50%, and literary agencies asserting claims despite not being book rightsholders. Strauss said publishers have attributed some errors to poor recordkeeping and asked Anthropic to correct them, but said the volume and repetition of complaints suggested a potentially widespread and systemic problem. Authors can dispute allocations, with a 100% claim requiring rights to have reverted before August 10, 2022, the settlement’s download date.