Technology giant Apple was sued on Friday by authors who accuse the company of illegally using their copyrighted books to train its artificial intelligence systems. The proposed class action, filed in federal court in Northern California, alleges that Apple copied protected works without seeking consent, providing credit, or offering compensation to the original creators. The plaintiffs, authors Grady Hendrix and Jennifer Roberson, stated that “Apple has not attempted to pay these authors for their contributions to this potentially lucrative venture.”
This lawsuit is the latest in an expanding legal battle over the use of intellectual property in the development of artificial intelligence. Authors, news outlets, and other content creators have filed a wave of cases against major tech companies, alleging that their copyrighted works are being used without permission to train AI models. This case against Apple mirrors similar claims currently faced by other industry leaders, including Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and OpenAI.
The legal landscape for these disputes is beginning to take shape, with a significant development emerging on the same day. AI startup Anthropic disclosed in a court filing that it had agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class action from authors who made nearly identical accusations regarding its AI chatbot, Claude. While Anthropic did not admit liability, plaintiff lawyers called it the largest publicly reported copyright recovery in history.
The lawsuit against Apple specifically alleges that the company used a known body of pirated books to train its “OpenELM” large language models. Plaintiffs Hendrix and Roberson claim their works were included in this pirated dataset. As of Friday, Apple and lawyers for the plaintiffs had not immediately responded to requests for comment on the allegations.
