Apple sued by authors over alleged AI training with copyrighted books
Authors Grady Hendrix and Jennifer Roberson filed a class action lawsuit against Apple, alleging the company used their copyrighted works without permission or compensation to train its large language model. The lawsuit claims Apple accessed shadow libraries containing pirated books to develop its OpenELM AI system, while Anthropic separately agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle similar allegations from over 500,000 authors.
What happened
Authors Grady Hendrix and Jennifer Roberson filed a class action lawsuit against Apple in federal court in Northern California, alleging the company copied their copyrighted works without permission, attribution, or compensation to train its large language model OpenELM.
According to the plaintiffs, Apple accessed shadow libraries containing collections of pirated books to develop its AI system. The authors claim Apple has not attempted to compensate them for the use of their work in a project with significant commercial potential.
Reported impact
The plaintiffs allege that Apple's actions have stripped them of control over their works, damaged the economic value of their creative efforts, and allowed Apple to achieve commercial success through unlawful means. The lawsuit was filed as a class action due to the large number of books and authors allegedly affected.
Index analysis
This case is part of a broader wave of copyright infringement lawsuits against major technology companies. On the same date, Anthropic disclosed that it had agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class action lawsuit brought by over 500,000 authors alleging unauthorized use of their books to train its Claude chatbot, which plaintiffs' counsel called the largest copyright recovery ever publicly disclosed.
Governance controls
As of 5 September 2025, neither Apple nor the plaintiffs' legal representatives had provided a response to the allegations.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.