Authors Sue Anthropic for AI Copyright Infringement

Three authors have filed a class-action lawsuit against Anthropic, an artificial intelligence company, in a federal court in California

The authors claim that Anthropic abused their books and the works of others to train its AI chatbot, Claude. Writers Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson filed a complaint alleging that Anthropic employed pirated versions of their works to instruct Claude to respond to human stimuli.

An Anthropic spokesperson acknowledged the lawsuit and indicated that the company is evaluating the complaint. However, they declined to provide additional information due to the ongoing litigation. Additionally, an attorney representing the authors declined to provide commentary.

The lawsuit is in addition to other important complaints from copyright holders, such as visual artists, news agencies, and record labels, regarding the use of material by technology companies to train generative AI systems. Alleged misuse of authors’ work has resulted in filing separate litigation against Meta Platforms and OpenAI.

This litigation is the second against Anthropic, following a previous lawsuit filed by music publishers regarding the purported misuse of copyrighted song lyrics. The authors assert that Anthropic has “established a multibillion-dollar enterprise by illegally appropriating hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books.” They are requesting a permanent injunction against any additional infringements