Salesforce sued by authors for using copyrighted books in AI training
Authors Molly Tanzer and Jennifer Gilmore filed a proposed class action lawsuit against Salesforce, alleging the company used thousands of copyrighted books without permission to train its xGen AI models. The complaint notes that Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has previously criticized AI companies for using "stolen" training data and stated that paying creators would be "very easy to do."
What happened
Authors Molly Tanzer and Jennifer Gilmore filed a proposed class action lawsuit against Salesforce on Wednesday, alleging the company used thousands of copyrighted books without permission to train its xGen AI models.
The complaint stated that Salesforce infringed copyrights by using the authors' work and that of others to train xGen to process language.
Reported impact
The lawsuit alleges that content creators were not fairly compensated for their work used in AI training.
Index analysis
Attorney Joseph Saveri, representing the authors, stated that companies using copyrighted material for AI products should be transparent and fairly compensate content creators.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has previously criticized AI companies for using 'stolen' training data and stated that paying content creators would be 'very easy to do,' according to the complaint.
Governance controls
Salesforce declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.