Apple is facing a new proposed class-action lawsuit alleging copyright infringement in the training of its artificial intelligence models. The suit was filed by two neuroscience professors from SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University in Brooklyn, NY, approximately one month after a similar complaint.
The plaintiffs, Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen Macknik, claim Apple used their registered works without authorization. According to the filing, first reported by Bloomberg Law, the company allegedly trained its AI models using “shadow libraries” and “web-crawling software.” These methods are purported to provide access to pirated, copyrighted books, including two authored by the neuroscientists. This legal action follows a previous class-action lawsuit from a separate pair of authors who made a similar claim that Apple used published works without consent to train its Apple Intelligence models.
Other technology companies have encountered comparable legal challenges regarding their AI development. OpenAI faces a lawsuit from The New York Times based on similar accusations of copyright infringement. In a separate case earlier this year, the AI company Anthropic settled a class-action lawsuit that also revolved around copyright claims. As part of the settlement, Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to the 500,000 authors involved in the case.
