Anthropic Faces Class-Action Lawsuit Over AI Training with Pirated Books

Artificial intelligence company Anthropic has been sued by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson for allegedly using pirated versions of their books to train its chatbot, Claude. The authors seek monetary damages and an injunction. This lawsuit adds to numerous high-stakes complaints against tech firms over copyright misuse in AI training.

Artificial intelligence firm Anthropic is embroiled in a class-action lawsuit filed in a California federal court, with allegations from three authors that the company misappropriated their works to train its AI chatbot, Claude. Authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson accuse Anthropic of using pirated versions of their books, along with hundreds of thousands of other works, to teach its AI system to respond to human prompts.

A spokesperson for Anthropic confirmed the company's awareness of the lawsuit but declined to comment further due to the ongoing litigation. An attorney representing the authors also refrained from making a statement. This lawsuit is part of a growing trend of high-stakes legal actions by copyright holders, including visual artists, news outlets, and record labels, who claim their materials are being illicitly used to train generative AI models.

Other authors have previously sued OpenAI and Meta Platforms over similar allegations concerning their own large-language model training practices. This latest complaint represents the second legal challenge against Anthropic, following a previous case involving music publishers and copyrighted song lyrics. The authors seek unspecified financial compensation and a court order to block Anthropic from further misusing their copyrighted works.