Two authors have filed a lawsuit against Apple, accusing the company of using their copyrighted books without permission to train its AI models. Grady Hendrix and Jennifer Roberson claim Apple’s web scraper accessed “shadow libraries” containing pirated works, including their own, to develop Apple Intelligence—adding to the growing legal challenges facing tech companies over AI training data.
What you should know: The lawsuit seeks class action status due to the vast number of books and authors potentially affected by Apple’s alleged use of pirated content.
- The plaintiffs argue that Apple, despite being “one of the biggest companies in the world,” made no attempt to compensate authors for their contributions to what could become a highly profitable AI venture.
- Apple’s Applebot scraper allegedly accessed unlicensed copyrighted books from shadow libraries—underground digital collections of pirated content—to train its AI models.
The legal argument: The authors claim Apple violated their copyright by using their works to create AI systems that directly compete with human-written content.
- “Apple has copied the copyrighted works of the plaintiffs to train AI models whose outputs compete with and dilute the market for those very works — works without which Apple Intelligence would have far less commercial value,” the filing states.
- The lawsuit argues this conduct has “deprived Plaintiffs and the Class of control over their work, undermined the economic value of their labor, and positioned Apple to achieve massive commercial success through unlawful means.”
The bigger picture: This case represents the latest in a series of high-profile lawsuits targeting AI companies over training data practices.
- OpenAI faces multiple lawsuits, including cases from The New York Times and the oldest nonprofit newsroom in the US.
- Anthropic, maker of the Claude chatbot, recently agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a similar class action complaint brought by authors over pirated training data.
- The Anthropic settlement will reportedly provide $3,000 per work to approximately 500,000 authors involved in the case.
Why this matters: These lawsuits are establishing crucial precedents for how AI companies must handle copyrighted content, potentially reshaping the economics of AI development and forcing tech giants to negotiate licensing deals with content creators rather than scraping data without permission.
Recent Stories
DOE fusion roadmap targets 2030s commercial deployment as AI drives $9B investment
The Department of Energy has released a new roadmap targeting commercial-scale fusion power deployment by the mid-2030s, though the plan lacks specific funding commitments and relies on scientific breakthroughs that have eluded researchers for decades. The strategy emphasizes public-private partnerships and positions AI as both a research tool and motivation for developing fusion energy to meet data centers' growing electricity demands. The big picture: The DOE's roadmap aims to "deliver the public infrastructure that supports the fusion private sector scale up in the 2030s," but acknowledges it cannot commit to specific funding levels and remains subject to Congressional appropriations. Why...
Oct 17, 2025Tying it all together: Credo’s purple cables power the $4B AI data center boom
Credo, a Silicon Valley semiconductor company specializing in data center cables and chips, has seen its stock price more than double this year to $143.61, following a 245% surge in 2024. The company's signature purple cables, which cost between $300-$500 each, have become essential infrastructure for AI data centers, positioning Credo to capitalize on the trillion-dollar AI infrastructure expansion as hyperscalers like Amazon, Microsoft, and Elon Musk's xAI rapidly build out massive computing facilities. What you should know: Credo's active electrical cables (AECs) are becoming indispensable for connecting the massive GPU clusters required for AI training and inference. The company...
Oct 17, 2025Vatican launches Latin American AI network for human development
The Vatican hosted a two-day conference bringing together 50 global experts to explore how artificial intelligence can advance peace, social justice, and human development. The event launched the Latin American AI Network for Integral Human Development and established principles for ethical AI governance that prioritize human dignity over technological advancement. What you should know: The Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, the Vatican's research body for social issues, organized the "Digital Rerum Novarum" conference on October 16-17, combining academic research with practical AI applications. Participants included leading experts from MIT, Microsoft, Columbia University, the UN, and major European institutions. The conference...