Authors Sue Anthropic for Copyright Infringement
A group of authors has come together to file a class action lawsuit against Anthropic for copyright infringement related to the data it used to train its AI models.
Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson, authors of published books, allege that Anthropic illegally downloaded and copied their work. The August 19 complaint claims that “Anthropic has built a multibillion-dollar business by stealing hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books.”
The complaint goes on to say “Anthropic downloaded known pirated versions of Plaintiffs’ works, made copies of them, and fed these pirated copies into its models.”
The lawsuit accuses Anthropic of training its large language model (LLM), Claude, on copyright-protected works and providing users with the authors’ hard work at little to no cost. The plaintiffs say that Anthropic didn’t attempt to compensate them, not even by purchasing the works legally, and lacked transparency related to disclosing the data it used to train its LLMs.
The three named authors initiated the class action suit to represent over 1,000 authors and copyright owners, alleging that Anthropic illegally downloaded and used their works. The lawsuit seeks unspecified financial damages, requesting Anthropic to compensate the content creators and cover any necessary legal costs.
The plaintiffs are also seeking a jury trial to decide whether the courts should force Anthropic to change its practices in the future to avoid any additional copyright infringement.
Anthropic is not the only company facing copyright concerns. In January, The New York Times sued Open AI. In response, Open AI continues to reach agreements with publishers to access their content and avoid copyright complaints.
