John Carreyrou is suing tech giants and AI startups, including Google, Anthropic, Meta platforms, and xAI, for the alleged use of copyrighted material in training AI systems, according to a report from Reuters. Carreyrou is widely recognised for his investigative work on the Silicon Valley blood-testing company Theranos, and his book Bad Blood focuses on this inquiry.
The New York Times journalist, along with five other authors, has initiated the lawsuit in a California federal court. They claim that companies developing language models should not easily dismiss countless high-value claims at minimal costs.
While numerous companies have faced similar legal challenges, this marks the first instance where Elon Musk’s AI firm, xAI, has been officially implicated. The authors opted to file separate lawsuits rather than uniting them into a single class-action case, allowing for direct negotiations with the defendants to resolve the accusations.
In August, Anthropic reached a substantial settlement in another copyright case, agreeing to pay $1.5 billion to a group of writers who claimed that the firm used millions of copyrighted books without permission. However, the authors involved in the class action received only a small fraction, about 2%, of the Copyright Act’s maximum compensation of $150,000.
Carreyrou has also publicly challenged Anthropic, labelling its actions an original sin and arguing that the $1.5 billion settlement falls short of what is appropriate. He believes that the firm should encounter more severe repercussions due to its practices in the AI training domain. As events unfold, attention turns to the court’s reactions and whether this will lead to further legal developments or stricter regulations.