Investigative reporter John Carreyrou and five other authors have filed a major copyright lawsuit against leading artificial intelligence companies. The suit targets Elon Musk’s xAI, Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, Meta Platforms, and Perplexity.
Filed Monday in California federal court, the lawsuit alleges that the companies used copyrighted books without permission. The authors allege their work was pirated and used to train the large language models (LLMs) powering the defendants’ AI chatbots.
This case is one of several pending copyright disputes over AI training data. However, it is strategically distinct. It is the first lawsuit to name xAI as a defendant. Furthermore, the authors are not seeking a class action. Their complaint argues that class actions favour defendants by allowing them to settle many claims at once for a low amount.
Writers including Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Carreyrou filed a copyright lawsuit accusing six AI giants of using pirated copies of their books to train large language models. https://t.co/s7W7dcbBeg
— Bloomberg Law (@BLaw) December 22, 2025“LLM companies should not be able to so easily extinguish thousands upon thousands of high-value claims at bargain-basement rates,” the filing states. The lawsuit references Anthropic’s $1.5 billion settlement with a class of authors in August 2024. That case also involved allegations of AI training book piracy.
The new complaint criticises that settlement. It claims class members would receive only a small fraction of the maximum statutory damages allowed under copyright law. Attorneys from Freedman Normand Friedland represent the authors. This includes Kyle Roche, whom Carreyrou previously profiled in The New York Times.
Notably, Judge William Alsup previously criticised a separate firm co-founded by Roche. During the Anthropic settlement hearings, the judge suggested that Anthropic was recruiting authors to opt out in exchange for a “sweeter deal.” Roche declined to comment on the new filing.
John Carreyrou, author of “Bad Blood” about the Theranos scandal, has been vocal on this issue. At a prior hearing, he called the unauthorised use of books to build AI the industry’s “original sin.” He argued existing settlements do not provide adequate compensation or deterrence.
