Authors sue Microsoft for using their books to train AI
What's the story
A group of authors has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft, accusing the tech giant of using their books without permission to train its Megatron artificial intelligence model. The lawsuit was filed in a New York federal court on Tuesday by Kai Bird, Jia Tolentino, Daniel Okrent, among others. They allege that nearly 200,000 pirated digital versions of their works were used for this purpose.
Industry implications
Lawsuit part of broader trend
The lawsuit against Microsoft is part of a wider trend where authors, news outlets, and other copyright holders are suing tech companies over the alleged misuse of their material in AI training. This includes Meta Platforms, Anthropic, and Microsoft-backed OpenAI. The case comes just a day after a California federal judge ruled that Anthropic's use of books to train its AI systems was fair use under US copyright law but it could still be liable for pirating their books.
Legal demands
Authors seek $150,000 in damages for each copyrighted work
The authors have claimed that Microsoft used the pirated dataset to create a "computer model that is not only built on the work of thousands of creators and authors, but also built to generate a wide range of expression that mimics the syntax, voice, and themes of the copyrighted works on which it was trained." They are seeking statutory damages up to $150,000 for each work allegedly misused by Microsoft.