{"id":63172,"date":"2026-06-05T07:29:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T07:29:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/63172\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T07:29:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T07:29:11","slug":"for-writers-ais-promise-of-riches-turned-into-pocket-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/63172\/","title":{"rendered":"For writers, AI’s promise of riches turned into pocket change."},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cDollars damn me,\u201d Herman Melville wrote to<\/a> his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne on the eve of publication of \u201cMoby-Dick.\u201d \u201cWhat I feel most moved to write, that is banned,\u201d the sometime Pittsfield resident complained, \u201cit will not pay.\u201d <\/p>\n

Call it The Writer\u2019s Condition. When you scribble for a living, money flows through your fingers like water. That six-figure advance? Burned through it years ago, with no manuscript yet in sight. Are there any more quarters buried in those sofa cushions? Perhaps I should check again.<\/p>\n

About a year ago, my writer pals urged me to cash in on the $1.5 billion class action settlement in Bartz v. Anthropic. The artificial intelligence giant Anthropic, whose name, ironically, means \u201chuman-like,\u201d agreed to reimburse us for \u201cscraping,\u201d or destroying,<\/a> millions of copyrighted books to feed the content into its AI maw. <\/p>\n

The settlement would be a latter-day El Dorado, my buds assured me. With a projected payout of $5,000 per title, I would probably receive enough money to buy a used Tesla. Hey, I\u2019m not complaining.<\/p>\n

Over Christmas break, I met a tech lawyer in San Francisco who chuckled at the idea of Grub Streeters exalting over a $1.5 billion cash bonanza. The money was pocket change to Anthropic, he assured me. Just week, the company announced its intention<\/a> to go public, with a possible company valuation of $1 trillion. <\/p>\n

So, rounded up or down, the authors\u2019 settlement amounts to a zero percent tip for those of us among the thousands of writers who made Anthropic\u2019s signature program, Claude, vastly smarter.<\/p>\n

Anthropic to ink-stained wretches: Don\u2019t spend it all in one place! <\/p>\n

And that $5,000 payout? Not so fast, Mr. and Ms. Great American Novelist. Because so many writers have filed for reimbursement, writer Elizabeth Benedict recently explained on her Substack<\/a> Our Lady of Opinions, \u201ceach of our works will receive less money than the original estimate \u2014 going from $4000+ to just under $3000, though we\u2019ll take home less.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s right \u2014 parasitic publishers and agents will lower our net payout even further. Say goodbye to the used Tesla, Alex. You\u2019ll be lucky to afford a used e-bike, the way things are going.<\/p>\n

Wait \u2014 there\u2019s more. Where we once thought we would score some bucks in May, the Authors Guild now predicts<\/a> disbursements in \u201clate fall at the earliest.\u201d This reminds me of the famous Soviet comedy routine, in which a gulag boss explains how prisoners\u2019 lives will change, now that dictator Josef Stalin is dead: \u201cThings will be getting better, but not all at once, and not for all of you.\u201d <\/p>\n

When I asked the Anthropic chatbot Claude Sonnet 4.6 for my money, he\/she\/it blew me off with aplomb: \u201cTo find out when you will receive your payment and how much it will be, you should check the official communication from the settlement administrator or legal counsel managing the case.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hope springs eternal. The Authors Guild and a group of celebrity writers such as Jodi Picoult, John Grisham, and Stephen King have sued<\/a> Anthropic\u2019s main rival, OpenAI, for copyright infringement, so perhaps a similar, begrudging payout awaits us in the future.<\/p>\n

By the way, if you think Herman Melville\u2019s financial woes ended with the publication of his magisterial whaling novel, you would be wrong. Harpooned by critics (\u201can intellectual chowder of romance, philosophy, natural history, fine writing, good feeling, bad sayings\u201d \u2013 The Literary World<\/a>) \u201cMoby-Dick\u201d never sold well. Like so many writers, Melville ended his life in penury.<\/p>\n

At least Claude got this right: \u201cHerman Melville died in relative obscurity and financial difficulty. \u2026 Melville struggled financially for much of his later life and was largely forgotten by the public and literary circles during that period.\u201d<\/p>\n

We didn\u2019t get into it for the money \u2014 good thing, too.<\/p>\n

Alex Beam is a contributing Globe Opinion writer. Follow him @imalexbeamyrnot<\/a>.<\/p>\n