Microsoft Sued By Group of Authors for Allegedly Using Their Books for AI Training

Microsoft is facing a lawsuit from a group of authors accusing the company of using their books for AI training, Reuters is reporting today. The plaintiffs, which include high-profile writers such as Daniel Okrent and Kai Bird, alleged that Microsoft used nearly 200,000 pirated digital books without the authors’ consent to train its Megatron AI model.

The lawsuit was filed in New York federal court on Tuesday. It claims that Microsoft used the copyrighted material 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.”

The group of authors is seeking statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each work that Microsoft allegedly used for AI training without permission from the authors. Microsoft declined to comment on the lawsuit when Reuters reached out to the company.

This new lawsuit follows similar cases about fair use against Meta and Anthropic AI, which both companies won this week. In the Meta case, the company was sued by 13 authors accusing the company of violating copyright law by training its model with their books. Ultimately, the judge determined that the plaintiffs presented no meaningful evidence that Meta’s LLMs could enable the generation of countless works that compete with the originals.

In the Anthropic case, a federal judge determined that the company training its AI models using legally purchased books without the authors’ consent was fair use. However, the company will face another trial related to its use of pirated copies for creating a central library of “all the books in the world.”