AI at Warp Speed: Breakthroughs, Battles and Big Bets (Sept 5–6, 2025)
Book Authors vs Tech Giants: In a new front of the AI copyright wars, Apple was hit with a proposed class-action lawsuit by two novelists on Sept 5, accusing the company of “illegally” ingesting their books to train AI reuters.com. “Apple has not attempted to pay these authors for their contributions to this potentially lucrative venture,” the complaint asserts reuters.com. The suit follows a wave of litigation from writers, news outlets and artists who allege Big Tech is pilfering content to feed AI models. Notably, Anthropic – maker of the Claude chatbot – agreed the same day to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class-action by authors claiming their novels were used without permission reuters.com. The deal, which Anthropic reached without admitting wrongdoing, is being hailed as a milestone. “This settlement sends a powerful message… that taking copyrighted works from pirate websites is wrong,” said lawyers for the authors, calling it the largest copyright recovery ever reuters.com. Under the agreement, Anthropic will destroy all downloaded books and could still face claims if its AI outputs infringe authors’ rights reuters.com.