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The Conversation
The Conversation
Laura Beers, Professor of History, American University

Thousands of AI-written, edited or ‘polished’ books are being sold – an eerie echo of Orwell’s ‘novel-writing machines’

George Orwell Claude Anthropic Amazon
When it comes to machine-produced 'literature,' does it really matter whether the outputs can pass for original art? J Studios/Digital Vision via Getty Images

At some point in the next several months, I am hoping to receive a modest check as a member of the class covered in the class-action settlement Bartz v. Anthropic.

In 2025, the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, best known for creating the chatbot Claude, agreed to pay up to US$1.5 billion to thousands of authors after a judge ruled that the company had infringed upon their copyrights.

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