Authors Up in Arms

On September 5, 2025, Apple became the next artificial intelligence (“AI”) proprietor to be hit with a class action lawsuit brought by authors claiming that their copyrighted books were illegally used to train an AI product. Plaintiffs Grady Hendrix and Jennifer Roberson, two American authors, brought the suit on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated (the “Class”), claiming that Apple utilized its tool, Applebot, to scrape mass quantities of webpages, including Books3, “a dataset of pirated copyrighted books that includes the published works of Plaintiffs and the Class.”

The Plaintiffs and the Class further allege that Apple utilized this material to train its OpenELM language models and Foundation Language Models. In particular, alleging that Apple did so without obtaining consent from the Plaintiffs and the Class and without providing compensation, such as through a licensing arrangement. Further, claiming that in doing so, Apple has copied the copyrighted works of Plaintiffs and the Class to train its AI models wherein the outputs from such AI models, “compete with and dilute the market for those very works” that Apple relied on to train its AI.

This class action brought against Apple comes in the wake of several other lawsuits against entities that are similarly situated in the market. Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic have all faced similar lawsuits in which authors have claimed that each respective company used their books to train its AI models without obtaining consent or providing compensation.

Notably, the case against Anthropic is awaiting settlement, pending approval from the court. In August of 2024, Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson alleged that Anthropic used the content of millions of copyrighted books to train its large language model, Claude. Subsequently, in June of 2025, Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, held that Anthropic’s training use was fair use, but that there would be a trial on the pirated copies used and the resulting damages. Following Judge Alsup’s findings, Anthropic announced it had agreed to settle for $1.5 billion, subject to approval from Judge Alsup, which has not yet been granted.

AI, the governance of AI training, and the resulting litigation remain a developing field. We will continue to monitor for any significant developments.