Yesterday, six authors filed new individual copyright infringement actions against Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta, xAI, and Perplexity AI. The suits, which were filed in the Northern District of California, states the companies copied authors' books from well-known pirate libraries—including LibGen, Z-Library, and OceanofPDF—to train their large language models without permission, licensing, or compensation.

The group of authors, which includes two-time Pulitzer Prize winner John Carreyrou, are among those who opted out of the proposed $1.5 billion settlement of the lawsuit against Anthropic, announced in September. They argue, as in previous cases, that high-quality books are the "gold standard" of training data and that the AI companies "used those copies to build systems now worth many hundreds of billions of dollars."

While these new lawsuits note they are prompted by copyright infringement—despite Judge William Alsup, who presided over the Anthropic case, finding AI training fair use— they specifically emphasize the use of pirated ebooks, the factor on which Alsup settled as demanding remedy, hence the proposed settlement.

The new filing states that the settlement, which would provide $3,000 to authors and/or publishers, is not enough. The suits state that $3,000 is "a tiny fraction (just 2%) of the Copyright Act's statutory ceiling of $150,000 in addition to attorneys' fees per willfully infringed work." The plaintiffs are indeed seeking $150,000 in statutory damages for each work against each defendant, thus looking for $900,000 in total per work.

In addition to Carreyrou, author of Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, the other writers in the lawsuit are Lisa Barretta, who has written 11 books on spirituality, tattoos, and psychic development; Philip Shishkin, author of Restless Valley, a nonfiction account of Central Asian political turmoil; Jane Adams, a psychologist who has written eight nonfiction books on family relationships and life transitions; Matthew Sack, an IT professional who wrote Pro Website Development and Operations; and Michael Kochin, a political science professor at Tel Aviv University and author of Five Chapters on Rhetoric: Character, Action, Things, Nothing & Art.

This fall, a website under the name ClaimsHero launched with the intention of enticing authors to opt out of the Anthropic settlement and join in filing new lawsuits. As it stands, authors have until January 16 to not join the proposed settlement—something that Alsup has strongly opposed.

In a November 13 hearing, Alsup called ClaimsHero's claims “a fraud of immense proportions” and told the company to alter its “misleading” communications. The hearing came after authors who are part of the lawsuit filed a motion seeking an order to stop ClaimsHero from trying to lure authors to opt out. He then ordered changes be made to the ClaimsHero website, noting in particular that they had no experience litigating in federal or state court, according to a report by Bloomberg News, who reported on the hearing.

ClaimsHero, while describing itself as a licensed Arizona law firm and a consumer justice platform, partners with two outside law firms: Stris & Maher LLP and Freedman Normand Friedland LLP, both of which are the firms listed as having filed Monday's lawsuit.

In speaking with PW through an outside PR firm, the attorneys representing the plaintiffs in this new case emphasized that that the filing is not a class action suit, and though the filing is collective—a somewhat unorthodox action—each author is seeking individual jury trials pertaining to their work. They also pointed to having successfully used a similar strategy to win settlements in Henry et al. v. Brown University et al., an antitrust case brought against 17 of the top 25 universities for price fixing college tuition last year.

The process of going to court on an individual basis to challenge deep-pocket companies can be costly, and the attorneys are advancing all costs and legal fees in exchange for a 35% contingency fee.

PW has reached out to several defendants in the case for comment, but has yet to receive a response. Bloomberg reported receiving an email from xAI, Elon Musk's AI company, stating “Legacy Media Lies." Bloomberg also spoke with Jesse Dwyer, head of communications at Perplexity, who denied the AI company indexes books.

As of Tuesday afternoon, no date has been set for a preliminary court hearing.

This story has been updated with additional information and context.