NextFin news, Authors Grady Hendrix and Jennifer Roberson sued Apple on Friday in federal court in Northern California, accusing the tech giant of illegally using their copyrighted books to train its artificial intelligence models. The lawsuit alleges that Apple incorporated their works without consent, credit, or compensation.
The complaint centers on Apple's use of a dataset known as Books3, described in the suit as a collection of pirated copyrighted books. According to the plaintiffs, Apple used Books3 to train its OpenELM language models, as disclosed in Apple's research paper published last year on the open-source platform Hugging Face. The paper references RedPajama, a dataset that includes Books3, linking Apple directly to the use of pirated materials.
Hendrix, based in New York, and Roberson, from Arizona, claim their published works were included in the pirated dataset. They are seeking to have the case certified as a class action to represent other authors whose works were similarly used without authorization.
The lawsuit requests statutory and compensatory damages, restitution, disgorgement of profits, attorneys’ fees, and an injunction to prevent Apple from continuing the alleged infringing conduct. Additionally, the plaintiffs ask the court to order the destruction of any AI models and training sets that incorporate their copyrighted works.
This legal action follows a growing wave of lawsuits against major technology companies accused of using copyrighted content without permission to train AI systems. Recently, AI startup Anthropic agreed to a record $1.5 billion settlement in a similar class action brought by authors. Other companies like Microsoft, Meta, and OpenAI have also faced related litigation.
Apple has not publicly responded to the lawsuit as of Saturday, September 6, 2025. The case adds to ongoing debates and legal scrutiny over copyright protections in the era of artificial intelligence development.
Explore more exclusive insights at nextfin.ai.
