Apple Accused in Authors’ AI Appropriation
A group of authors has filed a lawsuit against Apple, accusing the company of using copyrighted books without permission to train its artificial intelligence systems. The case, lodged in a California federal court, was initiated by writers Grady Hendrix and Jennifer Roberson, who claim their works were used to train Apple’s OpenELM language model without consent, credit, or compensation, according to Reuters.
The plaintiffs allege that Apple deliberately relied on datasets containing pirated books. The lawsuit states, “Apple never made any attempt to compensate authors for their contributions.” Neither Apple nor the plaintiffs’ legal representatives provided immediate comment on the matter.
This development marks the latest addition to a growing wave of legal challenges facing tech giants over the use of copyrighted materials in AI training. Previously, OpenAI, Meta, and Microsoft faced similar accusations. Recently, Anthropic reached a $1.5 billion settlement with authors, described as the largest financial resolution to date in a copyright-related dispute.
Analysts suggest that such lawsuits are raising profound questions about the legality of datasets used in AI training and are emerging as a new challenge for the technology sector.
