Apple sued for using copyrighted material to train AI, report says

Two neuroscientists are suing Apple, alleging that the company trained its AI models using libraries of pirated books that included their copyrighted works and those of others.

Apple now joins the ranks of other tech companies like Meta and OpenAI, which have also been sued over their use of copyrighted material to train AI systems. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, filed a lawsuit in April against OpenAI, alleging that it violated Ziff Davis’ copyrights in the training and operation of its AI systems.)

Typically, tech companies argue that the legal doctrine of fair use allows them to use copyrighted material in this context, even without permission or payment.

THE trial from Dr. Susana Martinez-Conde and Dr. Stephen Macknik, professors of neuroscience at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, is actually the second lawsuit in just over a month targeting the iPhone maker for using copyrighted material to train its Apple Intelligence models.

Last month, authors Grady Hendrix and Jennifer Roberson also continued Apple, claiming that the company’s scraper, Applebot, extracts material from “ghost libraries”, online collections of copyrighted books without a license.

The latest lawsuit filed by Professors Martinez-Conde and Macknik also alleges that Apple extracts copyrighted material for AI training from shadow libraries. The two plaintiffs claim that Apple trained its OpenELM model using a hacked database called Books3, a shadow library containing more than 190,000 books. This is the same set of hacked data at issue in the cases Kadrey v. Meta and Bartz v. Anthropic, which were ultimately decided in favor of the AI ​​companies.

However, the issue of AI training and copyright remains unresolved as various cases are handled by the US court system.

Anthropic has also settled a class-action lawsuit in September, after being sued by authors for using 500,000 pirated works to train the company’s AI chatbot, Claude. Last month, Anthropic agreed to settle the lawsuit for $1.5 billion.

The lawsuit filed by Hendrix and Roberson against Apple is also seeking class action status.

Apple has been sued before over Apple Intelligence, although these two lawsuits mark the first time the company has been sued for copyright infringement. Earlier this year, Apple was continued for advertising Apple Intelligence features that have been delayed and not yet available to consumers. That of Elon Musk X also continued Apple for its partnership with ChatGPT creator OpenAI. Apple’s deal with OpenAI involves the AI ​​giant powering certain features of Apple Intelligence.