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Apple Faces Lawsuit Over Alleged Use of Copyrighted Books to Train AI

By  |  September 7, 2025

Apple Inc. has been hit with a lawsuit accusing the company of using copyrighted books without permission to train its artificial intelligence systems, according to Reuters. The case, filed Friday in federal court in Northern California, claims the tech giant built its large language models on a dataset containing pirated works.

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    Authors Grady Hendrix and Jennifer Roberson brought the proposed class action, alleging that Apple failed to credit or compensate creators whose works were included. The lawsuit states, “Apple has not attempted to pay these authors for their contributions to this potentially lucrative venture.” Per Reuters, neither Apple nor attorneys for the plaintiffs immediately responded to requests for comment.

    The complaint against Apple follows a growing trend of legal challenges targeting technology firms accused of exploiting copyrighted material in the rush to advance AI. Earlier on Friday, AI startup Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a lawsuit from authors who claimed their books were misused to train the company’s Claude chatbot, Reuters reported. While Anthropic did not admit liability, lawyers for the plaintiffs described the settlement as the largest publicly disclosed copyright recovery to date.

    Read more: New Legal Filing Raises Questions About UK ‘Agreement’ to Drop Demand for Apple Backdoor

    The legal battle has also extended to other industry leaders. In June, Microsoft was sued by authors alleging their works were used without authorization to train its Megatron AI model. OpenAI, backed by Microsoft, and Meta Platforms have faced similar claims over their use of copyrighted content in training data.

    According to Reuters, the lawsuit against Apple specifically alleges the company employed its “OpenELM” language models using a trove of pirated books. Hendrix, a New York resident, and Roberson, who lives in Arizona, argue their works were part of this dataset.

    Source: Reuters