Authors Sue Microsoft for Training AI on Pirated Books
Authors including Kai Bird, Jia Tolentino, and Daniel Okrent sued Microsoft in federal court, alleging the company trained its Megatron AI model on nearly 200,000 pirated digital books without permission, thereby violating copyright law and infringing author rights. The plaintiffs seek injunctive relief and statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work.
What happened
Authors including Kai Bird, Jia Tolentino, and Daniel Okrent filed a lawsuit in New York federal court on Tuesday alleging that Microsoft used nearly 200,000 pirated digital books without permission to train its Megatron AI model.
According to the complaint, Microsoft built the model to generate text that mimics the syntax, voice, and themes of the copyrighted works used in training.
Reported impact
The authors claim the use violates copyright law and harms their rights as creators.
The plaintiffs are seeking a court order to stop the alleged infringement and statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each work.
Index analysis
The lawsuit follows similar cases against Meta and Anthropic over AI training with copyrighted materials, with both companies prevailing on fair use grounds this week. However, Anthropic faces a separate trial over its use of pirated copies.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.