Microsoft (MSFT) Sued By Authors Over AI Copyright Claim

U.S. tech giant Microsoft (MSFT) is being sued by a group of authors who claim the company has used their books without permission to train AI models.

Kai Bird, Jia Tolentino, and Daniel Okrent and others are claiming that Microsoft has used pirated digital versions of their books without their permission to train its Megatron AI model to respond to human prompts.

Pirated Books

The writers alleged in the complaint that Microsoft used a collection of nearly 200,000 pirated books to train Megatron, an algorithm that gives text responses to user prompts.

The complaint said Microsoft used the pirated dataset to create a “computer model that is not only built on the work of thousands of creators and authors, but also built to generate a wide range of expression that mimics the syntax, voice, and themes of the copyrighted works on which it was trained.”

The authors are seeking a court order blocking Microsoft’s infringement and statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each work that Microsoft allegedly misused.

Fair Use

Their lawsuit, filed in a New York federal court on Tuesday, is the latest case brought by authors, news outlets, and other copyright holders against tech companies including Meta Platforms (META), Anthropic and Microsoft-backed OpenAI over alleged misuse of their material in AI training.

Indeed, back in March, French authors brought a copyright lawsuit against Meta alleging it used their work to train its AI model Llama.

Tech groups typically defend their actions as fair use, arguing that as they are creating new content that helps power the development of AI.

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