New York Times Reporter Sues Six AI Giants Over Alleged Copyright Infringement in Training Data

New York Times reporter files lawsuit against AI companies

Investigative reporter John Carreyrou of the New York Times filed a lawsuit against xAI, Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, Meta and Perplexity on Monday for allegedly training their AI models on copyrighted books without permission. Carreyrou is perhaps for exposing the Theranos fraudulent blood test scandal. According to , the lawsuit was filed alongside five other writers who all claim big tech companies have been violating their intellectual property rights in the name of building large language models. This comes after a banner year for IP lawsuits against AI companies brought by rights holders. Just about every type of entity that deals in protected content has gone to court against AI companies this year, from movie studios like to papers like the . Some of these cases have led to settlements in the form of partnerships, such as the between Disney and OpenAI. It's notable that this case is being brought by a small group of individuals instead of as a class action, something the authors involved say is no accident. "LLM companies should not be able to so easily extinguish thousands upon thousands of high-value claims at bargain-basement rates," the complaint reads. This is also the first case of its kind to list xAI as a defendant. A spokesperson for Perplexity told Reuters that the company "doesn't index books." Anthropic, for its part, is no stranger to lawsuits from book publishers, having lawsuit brought by half a million authors for $1.5 billion. Apple was also amid similar allegations. This latest complaint mentions the Anthropic settlement specifically, saying that class members in that case will only receive "a tiny fraction (just 2 percent) of the Copyright Act's statutory ceiling of $150,000." Engadget has reached out to xAI, Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, Meta and Perplexity for comment and will update with any response.

New York Times reporter sues Google, xAI, OpenAI over chatbot training

Investigative journalist John Carreyrou has sued major AI companies, alleging they used copyrighted books without permission to train chatbots. The case names firms including OpenAI, Google, Meta, Anthropic, Perplexity and Elon Musk's xAI. The writers rejected a class action route, arguing settlements undervalue individual copyright claims. An investigative reporter best known for exposing fraud at Silicon Valley blood-testing startup Theranos sued Elon Musk's xAI, Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, Meta Platforms and Perplexity on ⁠Monday for using copyrighted books without permission to train their artificial intelligence systems. New York Times reporter and "Bad Blood" author John Carreyrou filed the lawsuit in California federal court with five other writers, accusing the AI companies of pirating their books and feeding them into the large language models (LLMs) that power the companies' chatbots. The lawsuit is one of several copyright cases brought by authors and other copyright owners against tech companies over the use of their work in AI training. The case is the first to name xAI as a defendant. Spokespeople for the defendants did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit. Unlike other pending cases, the writers are not seeking to band together in a larger class action - a type of lawsuit they said favours defendants by allowing them to negotiate a single settlement with many plaintiffs. "LLM companies should not be able to so easily extinguish thousands upon thousands of high-value claims at bargain-basement rates," the complaint said. Anthropic reached the first major settlement in an AI-training copyright dispute in August, agreeing to pay $1.5 billion to a class of authors who said the company pirated millions of books. The new lawsuit said class members in that case will receive "a tiny fraction (just 2%) of the Copyright Act's statutory ceiling of $150,000" per infringed work. Monday's complaint was filed by attorneys at law firm Freedman Normand ⁠Friedland including Kyle ⁠Roche, whom Carreyrou profiled in a 2023 New York Times article. During a November hearing in the Anthropic class action, U.S. District Judge William Alsup criticized a separate law firm Roche co-founded for gathering authors to opt out of the settlement in search of "a sweeter deal." Roche declined to comment on Monday. Carreyrou told the judge at a later hearing that stealing books to build its AI was Anthropic's "original sin" and that the settlement did not go far enough.

Elon Musk's xAI, Meta And Google Sued By New York Times Reporter John Carreyrou Over Alleged Use Of Pirated Books To Train AI - Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)

On Monday, New York Times investigative reporter and author John Carreyrou filed a federal lawsuit accusing major AI companies of illegally using copyrighted books to train their chatbots without permission. Authors Accuse AI Giants Of Copyright Theft Carreyrou, best known for authoring "Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup," sued ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, Alphabet Inc.'s (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google, Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META), Elon Musk's xAI, Anthropic and AI search startup Perplexity in California federal court.Bad Blood is an account about the fraud at Theranos, the startup led by Elizabeth Holmes. Five other writers -- Lisa Barretta, Philip Shishkin, Jane Adams, Mathew Sacks and Michael Kochin -- joined the complaint, alleging the companies copied their books without consent to train large language models that power generative AI tools. See Also: Sam Altman Calls Google 'A Huge Threat', Says The Tech Giant Would Have Been Able To 'Smash' OpenAI In 2023 No Class Action As Authors Seek Individual Claims Unlike several pending AI copyright lawsuits, the plaintiffs are not pursuing a class action. The complaint argues that class-action settlements allow AI companies to resolve thousands of alleged infringements at steep discounts. "Plaintiffs desire to retain full control of their case and avoid having their rights diluted by being swept into sprawling class-action settlements structured to resolve claims for pennies on the dollar," the filing read. Anthropic Settlement Draws Fresh Criticism The new lawsuit mentions Anthropic's August settlement. At the time, the AI startup agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by authors accusing it of using their books without authorization to train Claude. According to the new complaint, authors in that case stand to receive only a small portion of the maximum statutory damages allowed under U.S. copyright law. "The danger is not hypothetical," the filing read, adding, "These pending class actions and proposed settlement(s) seem to serve Defendants, not creators." OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity And xAI See Billion-Dollar Valuations OpenAI is reportedly negotiating a funding round that could raise up to $100 billion and potentially value the ChatGPT creator at as much as $830 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. Earlier, The Information reported the same deal but estimated OpenAI's valuation at around $750 billion. In October, the company was valued at roughly $500 billion in a secondary market transaction. Meanwhile, Anthropic, the AI startup behind the Claude LLM, is reportedly planning an IPO as early as 2026 and exploring a funding round that could push its valuation above $300 billion. In September, Perplexity, an AI-driven search startup that competes with Google by delivering conversational answers to queries, raised $200 million at a $20 billion valuation. Separately, reports last month indicated that Musk's xAI is in advanced talks to raise $15 billion, potentially valuing the company at $230 billion. Alphabet currently has a market capitalization of $3.7 trillion, while Meta has a market cap of $1.6 trillion. Benzinga Edge Rankings rank Google in the 90th percentile for momentum, with other metrics showing how its performance stacks up against peers such as Meta and Apple. Read Next: ChatGPT Just Hit $3 Billion in Consumer Spending -- And It Reached The Milestone Faster Than TikTok And Disney+ Ever Did Photo Courtesy: Indypendenz on Shutterstock.com Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. GOOGAlphabet Inc$311.600.09%OverviewGOOGLAlphabet Inc$310.090.10%METAMeta Platforms Inc$661.48-%Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

New York Times reporter sues Google, xAI, OpenAI over chatbot training

Dec 22 (Reuters) - An investigative reporter best known for exposing fraud at Silicon Valley blood-testing startup Theranos sued Elon Musk's xAI, Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, Meta Platforms and Perplexity on Monday for using copyrighted books without permission to train their artificial intelligence systems. New York Times reporter and "Bad Blood" author John Carreyrou filed the lawsuit in California federal court with five other writers, accusing the AI companies of pirating their books and feeding them into the large language models (LLMs) that power the companies' chatbots. The lawsuit is one of several copyright cases brought by authors and other copyright owners against tech companies over the use of their work in AI training. The case is the first to name xAI as a defendant. Spokespeople for the defendants did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit. Unlike other pending cases, the writers are not seeking to band together in a larger class action - a type of lawsuit they said favors defendants by allowing them to negotiate a single settlement with many plaintiffs. "LLM companies should not be able to so easily extinguish thousands upon thousands of high-value claims at bargain-basement rates," the complaint said. Anthropic reached the first major settlement in an AI-training copyright dispute in August, agreeing to pay $1.5 billion to a class of authors who said the company pirated millions of books. The new lawsuit said class members in that case will receive "a tiny fraction (just 2%) of the Copyright Act's statutory ceiling of $150,000" per infringed work. Monday's complaint was filed by attorneys at law firm Freedman Normand Friedland including Kyle Roche, whom Carreyrou profiled in a 2023 New York Times article. During a November hearing in the Anthropic class action, U.S. District Judge William Alsup criticized a separate law firm Roche co-founded for gathering authors to opt out of the settlement in search of "a sweeter deal." Roche declined to comment on Monday. Carreyrou told the judge at a later hearing that stealing books to build its AI was Anthropic's "original sin" and that the settlement did not go far enough. (Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington; Editing by David Bario and Alistair Bell)