Apple Hit With AI Copyright Lawsuit Ahead Of iPhone 17 Event

Ahead of its "Awe Dropping" iPhone 17 event, Apple has been hit with a class action lawsuit. The plaintiffs, including authors Grady Hendrix and Jennifer Roberson, claim that Apple allegedly used "Books3, a dataset of pirated copyrighted books that included their works” to train its AI models, including Apple Intelligence and OpenELM language.

They also allege that for years, Apple had used its web scraping bots, Applebot, to collect a vast amount of data without disclosing that such information would be used to train its AI systems. They further contend that the bots could access shadow libraries that illegally host millions of books and that the plaintiffs' works were scraped without their consent.

The plaintiffs are therefore demanding that Apple take responsibility for "Class statutory damages, compensatory damages, restitution, disgorgement, and any other relief that may be permitted by law or equity". In addition, they are also demanding that Apple ...