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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