Apple became the latest tech giant to face author copyright claims on Friday, the same day artificial intelligence (AI) startup Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle similar allegations of book piracy.
The class-action lawsuit filed in California federal court accuses Apple of illegally using copyrighted books to train its OpenELM artificial intelligence model without permission or payment. Authors Grady Hendrix and Jennifer Roberson claim Apple used “a known body of pirated books” for AI training.
The timing connects directly to Anthropic’s landmark settlement announcement. That deal resolves claims from authors who said the company downloaded millions of books from piracy sites like Library Genesis to train its Claude chatbot.
“As best as we can tell, it’s the largest copyright recovery ever,” said Justin Nelson, a lawyer for the Anthropic plaintiffs. “It is the first of its kind in the AI era.”
The Anthropic settlement breaks down to roughly $3,000 per book for an estimated 500,000 works. The authors called the agreement remarkable after facing potential damages of up to $150,000 per work if the case had gone to trial in December.
Judge William Alsup delivered a mixed ruling in June that shaped the settlement. He found that training AI on copyrighted books isn’t illegal, but acquiring those books through piracy violates copyright law.
“The settlement sends a powerful message to AI companies and creators alike that taking copyrighted works from these pirate websites is wrong,” Nelson said in a statement.
Anthropic must destroy all pirated book files as part of the deal. The settlement covers only past violations and doesn’t grant future licensing rights for copyrighted material.
The legal pressure extends across Silicon Valley. Microsoft faces a June lawsuit over its Megatron AI model, while Meta and OpenAI battle similar copyright claims. Some companies have chosen licensing deals over litigation.
“The settlement might be industry guiding and set corporate precedent on what can and can’t be accessed without consent,” said attorney Chad Hummel at McKool Smith.
Mary Rasenberger, CEO of the Authors Guild, called the Anthropic settlement “an excellent result for authors, publishers, and rightsholders generally, sending a strong message to the AI sector that there are serious consequences when they pirate authors’ works.”
The Apple lawsuit follows the same legal template. The authors claim the company violated their rights by using pirated materials without consent, credit, or compensation for their “potentially lucrative venture.”
A federal judge will review the Anthropic settlement on Monday. The agreement could encourage more cooperation between AI developers and content creators as the technology races ahead of legal frameworks.
The cases highlight a fundamental tension in AI development. Companies need vast amounts of text data to train language models, but acquiring that content legally requires expensive licensing deals or raises complex fair use questions.