Microsoft has been hit by a group of authors claiming it used the company without permission to train a Megatron artificial intelligence (AI) model.
Kai Bird, Jia Tolentino, Daniel Okrent and others claim that Microsoft uses the Pirated Digital version of the book to teach AI to respond to human prompts. Their case, filed Tuesday in federal court in New York, is one of several high-stakes cases brought by authors, news outlets and other copyright holders against authors, news outlets and other tech companies regarding alleged misuse in AI training.
The complaint against Microsoft came the day after a federal judge in California determined that humanity was used fairly under the copyright laws of the author's material to train AI systems, but they may still be responsible for the pirated version of their books. This was the US's first decision regarding the legality of using copyrighted materials without allowing generation AI training.
A Microsoft spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment regarding the lawsuit. The author's lawyer declined to comment.
The writer allegedly used a collection of nearly 200,000 pirated books to train Megatron, an algorithm that provides text responses to user prompts. The complaint states that Microsoft used pirated datasets to “create a wide range of representations that mimic the syntax, sound and themes of trained copyrighted works, not just computer models built on the works of thousands of creators and authors.”
Tech companies claim that if they are forced to use copyrighted materials fairly to create new, transformative content and pay copyright owners for their work, they could attack the burgeoning AI industry.
The author requested a court order blocking Microsoft's infringement and statutory damages of up to $150,000 (approximately Rs 1.28 trillion) for each work that was allegedly misused by Microsoft.
©Thomson Reuters 2025
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is automatically generated from the syndicate feed.)
