Yes, they are trained on books, but the courts so far are largely in agreement that AI models are neither copies nor derivative works of the source materials. If you’re searching for legal protections against your works being used for model training, copyright law as written today does not appear to give you cover.
Stuff can take a long time to wind their way through the court system. The worst cases already failed but many are going strong, here’s a 1.5 billion dollar win for authors.
Anthropic and the authors settled over a portion of the case involving the unauthorized copying of works that were used to train the model. Obtaining the works is a step that happens before the training has begun.
“the authors alleged nearly half a million books had been illegally pirated to train AI chatbots...”
Finally, a settlement isn’t a “win” from a legal perspective. It’s money exchanged for dropping the case. In almost every settlement, there’s no admission of guilt or liability.
The entire case settled, the authors aren’t going to appeal when the company can’t hand out much more than the 1.5 billion in question and the company isn’t allowed to use the works in question going forward.
As an attorney, I'm trying to understand what you're getting at.
His opinion, while interlocutory and not binding precedent, will be cited in future cases. And his wasn't the only one. In Kadrey v. Meta Platforms, Inc., No. 23-cv-03417 (N.D. Cal. June 25, 2025) Judge Chhabria reached the same conclusion. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.41...
I’m saying legally things aren’t clear cut at this point.
If you’ve read Kadrey the judge says harm from competing with the output of authors would be problematic. Quite relevant for software developers suing about code generation but much harder for novelists to prove. However, the judge came to the opposite conclusion about using pirate websites to download the books in question.
A new AI company that is expecting to face a large number of lawsuits and win some while losing others isn’t in a great position.
The judge didn’t come to an opposite legal conclusion about using pirated works. The judge concluded that the claim of using pirated works was unsubstantiated by the plaintiffs.
