Apple faces copyright lawsuit over alleged use of pirated books to train AI models
The proposed class action, lodged in federal court in Northern California, claims Apple copied protected works without seeking permission, offering credit, or providing compensation.
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Apple Inc. is facing fresh legal heat after two authors filed a lawsuit on Friday accusing the tech giant of illegally using copyrighted books to train its artificial intelligence models, Reuters reported.
The proposed class action, lodged in federal court in Northern California, claims Apple copied protected works without seeking permission, offering credit, or providing compensation.
"Apple has not attempted to pay these authors for their contributions to this potentially lucrative venture," the complaint, filed by authors Grady Hendrix and Jennifer Roberson, stated, as per the report.
Both allege their works were included in a dataset of pirated books used to train Apple's "OpenELM" large language models.
The company, along with lawyers for the plaintiffs, did not immediately respond to requests for comment, the report added.
The lawsuit adds to a mounting series of intellectual property battles between creators and technology firms accused of exploiting copyrighted materials to train AI systems.
In June, Microsoft faced a similar lawsuit from authors over its "Megatron" model. Meta Platforms and OpenAI, backed by Microsoft, have also been targeting in recent months.
Meanwhile, Anthropic disclosed on Friday that it reached a $1.5 billion settlement to resolve claims from authors alleging unauthorized use of their books to train its chatbot Claude.
The deal, which plaintiffs' attorneys called the largest publicly reported copyright recovery in history, did not include an admission of liability, the report added.
