John Carreyrou Sues Six AI Companies Over Unauthorized Use of Copyrighted Books for Training

John Carreyrou and other authors bring new lawsuit against six major AI companies | TechCrunch

A group of writers, including Theranos whistleblower and "Bad Blood" author John Carreyrou, is filing a lawsuit against Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, Meta, xAI, and Perplexity, accusing the companies of training their models on pirated copies of their books. If this sounds familiar, it's because another set of authors already filed a class action suit against Anthropic for these same acts of copyright infringement. In that case, the judge ruled that it was legal for Anthropic and similar AI companies to train on pirated copies of books, but that it was not legal to pirate the books in the first place. While eligible writers can receive about $3,000 from the $1.5 billion Anthropic settlement, some authors were dissatisfied with that resolution -- it doesn't hold AI companies accountable for the actual act of using stolen books to train their models, which generate billions of dollars of revenue. According to the new lawsuit, the plaintiffs say that the proposed Anthropic settlement "seems to serve [the AI companies], not creators." "LLM companies should not be able to so easily extinguish thousands upon thousands of high-value claims at bargain-basement rates, eliding what should be the true cost of their massive willful infringement," the lawsuit says.

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

6 AI Companies Face Copyright Lawsuit From Investigative Journalist John Carreyrou | PYMNTS.com

A spokesperson for Perplexity said in the report that the company "doesn't index books." The report noted that several copyright cases have been brought against tech companies involved with AI training. It added that the plaintiffs in this case said in their complaint that they didn't join a larger class action because such lawsuits make it easier for defendants to settle many cases "at bargain-basement rates." In another recently announced case, The New York Times sued Perplexity on Dec. 5, alleging that the AI startup repeatedly violated its copyrights by retrieving The Times' content with its AI-powered search engine and displaying large part of that content in a way that competes with The Times. The suit also accuses Perplexity of damaging the publisher's brand by in some cases making up information and falsely attributing that information to The Times. Reached by PYMNTS at the time, Perplexity Head of Communication Jesse Dwyer said in an emailed statement: "Publishers have been suing new tech companies for a hundred years, starting with radio, TV, the internet, social media and now AI. Fortunately it's never worked, or we'd all be talking about this by telegraph." In another case, it was reported in August that Anthropic settled a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by a group of authors who alleged that the company used pirated books without permission to train its AI assistant. The judge in that case ruled in June that Anthropic may have illegally downloaded as many as 7 million books. It was reported Dec. 7 that Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter to Google, alleging copyright infringement by the tech company via its AI tools. Disney called on Google to stop using its content in AI tools and to prevent those tools from generating images of Disney-owned characters.

Ex-WSJ reporter who exposed Theranos fraud sues AI giants over...

A Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter whose work helped bring down Theranos is now taking on Silicon Valley's biggest AI players -- accusing them of looting his books to build billion-dollar chatbots. John Carreyrou, the journalist behind the Wall Street Journal's exposé of disgraced blood-testing startup Theranos, sued six major artificial intelligence companies Monday in California federal court, alleging they illegally used copyrighted books to train their AI systems. Carreyrou, author of the bestselling tome "Bad Blood," filed one single lawsuit alongside five other writers against Google, Elon Musk's xAI, OpenAI, Meta Platforms, Anthropic and Perplexity. The complaint accuses the companies of pirating books and feeding them into large language models that power popular chatbots -- without permission or compensation. The case marks the first copyright lawsuit to name xAI as a defendant, expanding a growing legal assault by authors and publishers over how artificial intelligence systems are trained. Carreyrou, who's now at the New York Times, and the other plaintiffs argue that the AI industry has built its core technology on stolen intellectual property, drawing massive investments and reaping profits while creators receive nothing. A spokesperson for Perplexity said the company "doesn't index books." The other defendants did not immediately respond to requests for comment, according to Reuters. The Post has reached out to them. The lawsuit comes amid a wave of copyright cases targeting AI developers for scraping text, images and other works from the internet to train their models. Unlike other high-profile cases, Carreyrou and the other authors are deliberately steering clear of a class-action lawsuit, which would bundle claims together and allow companies to negotiate a single settlement. The writers say class actions favor defendants by limiting their exposure. "LLM companies should not be able to so easily extinguish thousands upon thousands of high-value claims at bargain-basement rates," the complaint states. The filing takes direct aim at a recent settlement in which Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by authors who alleged the company pirated millions of books for AI training. Carreyrou and his fellow plaintiffs opted out of that deal, arguing it dramatically undervalued authors' rights. According to the new complaint, class members in the Anthropic settlement will receive "a tiny fraction (just 2%) of the Copyright Act's statutory ceiling of $150,000" per infringed work. The writers say that outcome illustrates why class actions fail to hold AI companies accountable. Carreyrou has previously blasted Anthropic's conduct in court, calling the company's use of pirated books its "original sin" and arguing the settlement did not go far enough to deter future misconduct. Monday's lawsuit was filed by attorneys at Freedman Normand Friedland, including Kyle Roche -- a lawyer whom Carreyrou profiled in a 2023 New York Times article. During a November hearing in the Anthropic class action, US District Judge William Alsup criticized a separate law firm co-founded by Roche for organizing authors to eschew the settlement in favor of what the judge described as "a sweeter deal." Roche declined to comment Monday, according to Reuters.

Authors File Lawsuits Against OpenAI, Meta, Google over Alleged Use of Pirated Books for AI Training

Writers Take Legal Action Against OpenAI, Meta, Google for Copyrighted Book Use Artificial intelligence has not only completely changed the process of generating, examining, and distributing content, but has also sparked legal and ethical debates. Recently, prominent writers filed lawsuits against major AI companies, including OpenAI, Meta, and Google. The allegations are quite serious, as unauthorized use of copyrighted texts in training AI models has become a global concern. The lawsuits filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California show the conflicts between protecting intellectual property and fostering innovation. It is said that AI developers pirated books from online "shadow libraries," raising questions about fair use, authors' control, and the need for ethical, licensed data sourcing.

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)

Google, OpenAI and xAI sued over alleged use of copyrighted books to train AI

Unlike earlier cases, the plaintiffs have avoided a class action, arguing it limits fair compensation for creators. A journalist from The New York Times, known for uncovering the Theranos scandal, has filed a copyright lawsuit against several major AI companies, alleging that they used copyrighted books without permission to train their artificial intelligence models. For the unversed, the lawsuit was filed in California federal court, naming Elon Musk's xAI, OpenAI, Google, Meta Platforms, Anthropic and AI search startup Perplexity as defendants. Carreyrou, a New York Times reporter and author of Bad Blood, filed the lawsuit alongside five other writers, accusing the companies of illegally copying and using their books to create large language models that power popular chatbots. According to the complaint, the authors claim that their work was "pirated" and used in AI training datasets without their permission or compensation. The case adds to a growing list of legal challenges for AI firms, as authors, publishers, and other rights holders object to how copyrighted material is used to create generative AI systems. Notably, this is the first known copyright lawsuit that directly targets Musk-backed xAI. Also read: One week, 700 compounds: How a lab robot discovered new antibiotic Unlike in some previous cases, the plaintiffs are not seeking class action status. The authors contend that class actions benefit technology companies by allowing them to settle multiple claims at once for relatively low sums, rather than addressing individual infringements in full. A spokesperson for Perplexity stated that the company does not index or use books for training. Other defendants had not provided public responses at the time of filing. The lawsuit also draws attention to a recent settlement in which Anthropic settled a class-action lawsuit brought by authors regarding AI training practices by agreeing to pay $1.5 billion in August. Carreyrou and the other plaintiffs contend that these settlements do not sufficiently address the extent of alleged copyright violations and do not adequately compensate creators.