Chicken Soup for the Soul sues Apple, Google, and five others over AI training data theft

Chicken Soup for the Soul publisher sues tech companies over AI training

March 18 (Reuters) - Book publisher Chicken Soup for the Soul sued several Big Tech companies in California federal court late Tuesday for allegedly misusing its content to train their artificial intelligence systems. The publisher said, opens new tab that Apple (AAPL.O), opens new tab, Google (GOOGL.O), opens new tab, Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab, Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab, OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity AI and Elon Musk's xAI used pirated copies of its books to teach their chatbots to respond to human prompts. The publisher's complaint is unique in targeting several tech juggernauts at once. The lawsuit was filed by attorneys at law firm Freedman Normand Friedland, who have brought a similar ongoing case against Big Tech companies on behalf of writer John Carreyrou and other ⁠authors. "The action holds major AI companies accountable for exploiting hundreds of copyrighted works, sourced from illicit databases, without permission," Freedman Normand Friedland partner Kyle Roche said in a statement. "The message is clear: companies cannot build billion-dollar technologies on stolen creative expression." Spokespeople for the tech companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the complaint on Wednesday. Chicken Soup for the Soul publishes a series of inspirational books by the same name that have sold more than 500 million copies worldwide. Its lawsuit said that the companies downloaded bootleg copies of its books from "shadow libraries" to use in AI training. The ⁠publisher's lawsuit is one of dozens of high-stakes cases brought by authors, news outlets and other copyright owners against tech companies for using their work to train the large language models behind their chatbots. Chicken Soup for the Soul's lawsuit said that its first-person narratives in "natural, conversational language that conveys emotion, moral reflection, and coherent storytelling ⁠in concise form" are uniquely suited to train AI to "replicate authentic human voice, narrative pacing, emotional tone, and story structure." "Instead of paying for that value or licensing access to these works, Defendants pilfered illegal copies and used ⁠those copies to build systems now worth many hundreds of billions of dollars," the complaint said. The case is Chicken Soup for the Soul LLC v. Anthropic PBC, U.S. District Court for the ⁠Northern District of California, No. 5:26-cv-02333. For the publisher: Kyle Roche, Velvel Freedman and Alex Potter of Freedman Normand Friedland; Elizabeth Brannen, John Stokes, Bridget Asay, Christopher Rigali and Lauren Martin of Stris & Maher For the tech companies: attorney information not yet available Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab * Suggested Topics: * Transactional * Intellectual Property * Data Privacy Blake Brittain Thomson Reuters Blake Brittain reports on intellectual property law, including patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets, for Reuters Legal. He has previously written for Bloomberg Law and Thomson Reuters Practical Law and practiced as an attorney.

Apple named in AI lawsuit over data set it says doesn't power Apple Intelligence - 9to5Mac

Apple is named in a new AI lawsuit by publisher Chicken Soup for the Soul, reports Reuters. However, the lawsuit points to a data set that Apple has already said doesn't power Apple Intelligence. Per the Reuters report: Book publisher Chicken Soup for the Soul sued several Big Tech companies in California federal court late Tuesday for allegedly misusing its content to train their artificial intelligence systems. The publisher said that Apple (AAPL.O), Google (GOOGL.O), Nvidia (NVDA.O), Meta Platforms (META.O), OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity AI and Elon Musk's xAI used pirated copies of its books to teach their chatbots to respond to human prompts. The lawsuit, which you can read in full here, accuses Apple of using books to train its AI technology: This case concerns a straightforward and deliberate act of theft that constitutes copyright infringement. Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, Meta, xAI, Apple, Perplexity, and NVIDIA, illegally copied vast quantities of copyrighted books without permission and then used those stolen copies to build and train their commercial large language models ("LLMs") and/or optimize their product. Defendants helped themselves to the copyrighted works of thousands of authors -- including bestselling writers, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists, and creators of widely read nonfiction and fiction. Later in the filing, the lawsuit points to The Pile being used to train Apple Foundation Models. Rather than obtain licenses or pay for the use of these works, each Defendant downloaded pirated copies of Plaintiff's books from shadow-library websites such as The Pile, LibGen, Z-Library, and Anna's Archive and then reproduced, parsed, analyzed, re-copied, used, and embedded those works into their LLMs (and/or used those works to optimize their product) to accelerate commercial development and win the generative-AI race. The Copyright Act prohibits exactly this conduct. [...] "Apple Foundation Models" relied upon The Pile and Books 3. If The Pile rings a bell to you, that's likely because it surfaced in a different AI training accusation in 2024, involving YouTube videos. At the time, however, Apple said that the dataset in question was only used for research purposes and not actually used in any models that powered Apple Intelligence or machine learning features. Will that make a difference in this legal case? It will certainly be relevant, but we'll have to see what happens in court to know if it's a difference without a distinction or not.