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Authors sue Apple for 'using pirated versions of books to train AI'
Two authors have brought a lawsuit against Apple, alleging the company used pirated versions of their books to train its AI models.
The suit, filed in Northern California, claims Apple used the works of Grady Hendrix (whose books include Horrorstor: A Novel; Quirk Books) and Jennifer Roberson (Sword-Bearer; Daw Books), without permission, payment or credit. It is the latest in a number of actions being brought against tech companies as creatives fight for legal protections for intellectual property in the AI era.
It claims one or more of the authors’ “infringed” works were used to train Apple’s large language models (LLMs), and therefore “directly infringed [the authors’] copyrights”.
“Apple has not attempted to pay these authors for their contributions to this potentially lucrative venture,” the filing continues. “Apple did not seek licences to copy and use the copyrighted books provided to its models. Instead, it intentionally evaded payment by using books already compiled in pirated datasets.”
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Earlier this month, tech giant Anthropic – which is behind the chatbot Claude – agreed to pay $1.5bn to settle a lawsuit that was brought against the company by three authors, after it downloaded pirated versions of books to train its AI model. It is estimated that Anthropic will pay $3,000 for each piece of copyrighted work that was pirated.
In June, a group of authors brought a suit against Microsoft for allegedly using nearly 200,000 pirated books to train its AI models. The suit was filed in New York by authors including Kai Bird, Jia Tolentino and Daniel Okrent.
The Bookseller has emailed Apple for comment.
