Authors Allege AI Abuse, Sue Microsoft Over Pirated Book Training

Several authors have filed a lawsuit against Microsoft in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, accusing the tech giant of using pirated copies of their books without permission to train an artificial intelligence model named "Megatron." The report was confirmed by Reuters.

The plaintiffs include prominent writers such as Kai Bird, Jia Tolentino, and Daniel Okrent, among others.

According to the lawsuit, Microsoft allegedly used approximately 200,000 pirated books to develop a computer model capable of mimicking the authors’ writing styles and thematic elements. The authors are seeking damages of up to $150,000 per book and a court injunction to prevent further unauthorized use of their copyrighted works.

The case comes at a time when similar legal disputes are gaining traction. In a recent case in California, a court acknowledged some uses by Anthropic as “fair use” but did not dismiss concerns about book piracy.

Microsoft has not yet issued an official response to the lawsuit.