'Bad Blood' author takes on Google, Meta over AI copyright
John Carreyrou—the journalist who wrote "Bad Blood" about the Theranos scandal—has sued major tech companies including Google, Meta, OpenAI, xAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity.
He and five other authors say their books were used to train AI models without permission.
Instead of joining a big class action (which often leads to small payouts), the group is going solo and are pursuing their own lawsuit rather than joining the $1.5 billion class action settlement Anthropic reached with other authors in August 2025.
Judge calls out shady marketing; lawsuit could set new rules for AI
During a November hearing in the Anthropic class action, US District Judge William Alsup criticized a separate law firm Roche co-founded for gathering authors to opt out of the settlement.
The judge also told the authors they must testify under oath.
So far, none of the tech companies have responded to the lawsuit.
The authors are seeking up to $150,000 per book—and this case could help decide if using books for AI training is actually legal in the future.