Topic: copyright infringement
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ByteDance Reverses AI Tool That Turned Celebrities Into Clip Art
ByteDance is urgently adding safeguards to its Seedance 2.0 AI tool after facing intense criticism and legal threats from Hollywood studios and Japanese officials over copyright infringement. Major studios like Disney and Paramount Skydance sent cease-and-desist letters, condemning the tool for c...
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Music Publishers Sue Anthropic for $3B Over AI Song Piracy
Major music publishers are suing AI company Anthropic for allegedly pirating over 20,000 copyrighted songs, with potential damages exceeding $3 billion. The lawsuit follows a similar case where a court ruled AI training on copyrighted content is allowed, but acquiring it through piracy is illegal...
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News Outlaws Win Access to 20M ChatGPT Logs, Demand More
A federal judge has ordered OpenAI to provide news organizations with access to 20 million de-identified ChatGPT user logs, rejecting the company's privacy objections and marking a significant legal setback. The plaintiffs, including major publishers, need the full dataset to assess OpenAI's fair...
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Massive Pirate Library Leaks 86 Million Spotify Songs
An activist group called Anna's Archive claims to have scraped metadata for approximately 86 million popular songs from Spotify, representing a vast majority of the platform's total listens. The group, which typically archives books, stated it acted to preserve music and plans to eventually relea...
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Disney Sues Google Over AI Copyright Infringement
Disney has issued a cease-and-desist letter to Google, alleging its AI models (like Veo and Gemini) have engaged in widespread copyright infringement by generating Disney characters and stories without permission. Disney accuses Google of willfully leveraging its market dominance to profit from t...
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Disney Sues Google Over 'Massive' AI Copyright Infringement
Disney has sued Google for copyright infringement, alleging its AI models like Gemini were trained on and generate content from Disney's intellectual property without permission. The lawsuit coincides with Disney announcing a major partnership with OpenAI to integrate its characters into AI tools...
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New York Times Sues Perplexity Over Copyright
The New York Times has sued AI company Perplexity for copyright infringement, alleging its products use and repackage Times content without permission or payment, substituting for the newspaper's own offerings. The lawsuit, part of a broader industry campaign, aims to pressure AI firms into forma...
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NYT Sues Perplexity Over 'Verbatim' Copying of Articles
The New York Times has sued AI startup Perplexity, alleging its "answer engine" copies or closely mimics the newspaper's copyrighted articles, continuing a broader conflict between media and AI firms over content use. The lawsuit claims Perplexity's actions cause economic harm by creating substit...
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Major Studios Demand OpenAI Stop Using Their Content for AI Training
A coalition of Japanese studios, including Studio Ghibli and Bandai Namco through CODA, has demanded that OpenAI stop using their copyrighted works to train AI models, citing potential infringement. The dispute escalated with the launch of Sora 2, leading to a surge in AI-generated content using ...
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Sony Rejects Tencent's Defense of Alleged Horizon Rip-Off
Sony accuses Tencent of deliberately copying the Horizon franchise's visual style, audio, characters, and story, including hiring the same composer, and claims this harms the brand significantly. Tencent denies the allegations, arguing their game uses common genre tropes and is not a clone, while...
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Character.AI Pulls Disney Characters After Legal Threat
Character.AI has removed numerous Disney-owned characters after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Disney, which accused the platform of copyright infringement and misuse of intellectual property. Disney expressed concerns over the unpredictable and harmful interactions on the platform, cit...
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MPA Slams OpenAI for Sora 2 Copyright Opt-Outs
The Motion Picture Association demands OpenAI take immediate action against copyright infringement involving its Sora 2 video tool, criticizing the opt-out system for unfairly burdening creators. OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman has promised updates to give copyright holders more control but has not commi...
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Meta Accused of Using Pirated Porn to Train Its AI Superintelligence
Strike 3 Holdings has sued Meta, alleging the tech giant illegally downloaded and distributed 2,396 of its copyrighted adult videos via BitTorrent since 2018 to train AI systems. The lawsuit claims Meta sought this content for its unique visual and anatomical details to create more realistic AI-g...
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Britannica and Merriam-Webster Sue Perplexity AI Over Copyright Claims
Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster have sued Perplexity AI for copyright and trademark violations, alleging unauthorized content scraping and traffic diversion. The lawsuit claims Perplexity copies content verbatim, misuses brand names with inaccurate responses, and bypasses technical ba...
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Anthropic to Pay Authors $1.5B in AI Copyright Deal
Anthropic has agreed to a $1.5 billion settlement to resolve a class action lawsuit over copyright infringement, setting a major precedent for AI companies and compensating authors approximately $3,000 per work. The settlement applies to an estimated 500,000 works and may expand, with Anthropic n...
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Warner Bros. Sues Midjourney Over AI Copies of Batman, Scooby-Doo
Warner Bros. has sued Midjourney for systematically using its copyrighted characters, such as Superman and Batman, without permission to generate images and drive revenue. The lawsuit alleges that Midjourney continued its infringing practices despite prior legal actions by Disney and Universal, e...
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Warner Bros. Sues Midjourney Over AI-Generated DC Characters
Warner Bros. is suing Midjourney for copyright infringement, alleging the AI company allows users to generate unauthorized images of characters like Superman and Batman. The lawsuit claims Midjourney knowingly removed safeguards against copyright infringement to maximize profits, despite being aw...
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Warner Bros. Sues Midjourney Over AI-Generated Character Copies
Warner Bros. Discovery is suing Midjourney for unauthorized reproduction and distribution of its copyrighted characters, including Superman and Bugs Bunny, through AI-generated content. The lawsuit claims Midjourney's platform produces infringing material even with vague user prompts and accuses ...
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ByteDance to Revise AI Safeguards After Hollywood Alarm
ByteDance is enhancing safeguards for its AI video tool after it generated unauthorized, hyperrealistic content featuring celebrity likenesses and copyrighted characters from major studios. The company's actions are a direct response to legal challenges from entertainment giants like Disney and P...
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Hollywood Reacts to Seedance 2.0 Video Generator
ByteDance's new AI video generator, Seedance 2.0, has sparked major controversy by enabling users to easily create videos featuring copyrighted characters and celebrity likenesses without permission, leading to accusations of mass infringement from Hollywood studios and guilds. The tool's rapid a...
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Adobe sued for allegedly using authors' work to train AI
Adobe faces a class-action lawsuit alleging it used pirated books, including the author's works, from the controversial Books3 dataset to train its SlimLM AI language model. This case is part of a broader pattern of legal challenges against tech firms like Apple and Salesforce, highlighting indus...
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Meta Defends AI Lawsuit, Claims Downloaded Porn Was 'Personal Use'
Meta is facing a lawsuit from Strike 3 Holdings, which alleges the company illegally downloaded adult films using corporate IP addresses and a hidden network to train an AI model called Movie Gen, seeking over $350 million in damages. Meta has moved to dismiss the case, calling the claims baseles...
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Record Labels Sue Suno AI for Allegedly Stealing Songs from YouTube
Major record labels have escalated their lawsuit against AI startup Suno, accusing it of pirating music from YouTube to train its AI models through unlawful "stream ripping." The lawsuit alleges Suno violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by circumventing YouTube's encryption technology, w...
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Apple Sued for Using Pirated Books to Train AI
Apple is being sued by authors for allegedly training its AI systems on the Books3 dataset, which contains pirated books, without permission or compensation. The lawsuit, seeking class-action status, aims to stop Apple from using such materials and to secure financial damages for copyright infrin...
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Major Manga Piracy Network Shut Down
A major international operation, involving Japanese and Chinese authorities, dismantled a prominent manga piracy network, leading to the arrest of its alleged operator. The network, centered on sites like Bato.to, distributed unauthorized "scanalations" and attracted hundreds of millions of month...
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Cloudflare Refuses Italy's Piracy Shield, Keeps DNS Unblocked
Italy has fined Cloudflare €14.2 million for refusing to block alleged pirate websites via its DNS service, a penalty the company will legally contest and which may lead it to withdraw servers from the country. The fine is based on Italy's 2024 Piracy Shield law, which mandates rapid blocking of ...
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Sony Settles Legal Battle Over Tencent's Horizon Clone
Sony and Tencent have confidentially settled a lawsuit over "Light of Motiram", which Sony alleged was a clone of its Horizon series, leading to the case's dismissal. Following the settlement, "Light of Motiram" has been removed from major storefronts like Steam and the Epic Games Store and is no...
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Microsoft shuts down Halo 3 mod for Counter-Strike 2
Microsoft issued a DMCA takedown, halting the 'Project Misriah' mod that aimed to recreate Halo 3's multiplayer in Counter-Strike 2 due to its direct use of copyrighted assets. The mod had gained significant popularity for its technical achievement in the Source 2 engine, impressing both Halo fan...
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Tencent Halts Promotion of Alleged Horizon Clone Amid Sony Lawsuit
Tencent has agreed to halt all promotion and public testing for *Light of Motiram* as part of a court agreement with Sony, which alleges the game is a copy of its *Horizon* franchise. The lawsuit centers on accusations of copyright infringement due to the game's striking visual and thematic simil...
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OpenAI Faces Scrutiny Over Deleted Pirated Book Data
A court has ordered OpenAI to disclose confidential communications about its deletion of the "Books 1" and "Books 2" datasets, which were compiled from sources like LibGen and are central to a copyright lawsuit alleging ChatGPT was trained on pirated books. The plaintiffs argue OpenAI's shifting ...
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Suno CEO: Text Prompts Are 'Active' Music Creation
Suno raised $250 million, reaching a $2.45 billion valuation, but faces legal challenges from record labels over alleged copyright infringement in training its AI model. The platform's AI tools, like Create and Studio, generate music from text prompts but are criticized for lacking emotional dept...
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AI Takes Center Stage in the Music Industry
The music industry is shifting from legal battles to strategic partnerships with AI companies, exemplified by Klay's licensing agreements with major record labels to monetize AI-generated music within established frameworks. Legal settlements and new platforms are emerging that aim to ethically i...
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OpenAI Resists Order to Release 20 Million Private ChatGPT Chats
OpenAI is resisting a court order to release 20 million private ChatGPT user conversations, arguing it is overly broad and threatens individual privacy in a copyright lawsuit initiated by The New York Times. The company contends that the logs contain entire conversational threads, which could exp...
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Stalker 2 Devs Issue DMCA Against Copycat Game 'Misery'
GSC Game World issued a DMCA takedown against the game Misery, leading to its removal from Steam over alleged copyright infringement, which the Misery developer disputes as an abuse of power. The Misery team asserts their game is original and properly licensed, with no shared assets or code from ...
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Reddit Sues Perplexity AI Over Content Scraping
Reddit is suing Perplexity AI and three data-scraping firms for industrial-scale copyright infringement, alleging they unlawfully bypassed protections to harvest user content without permission. Perplexity AI is accused of using these services to obtain Reddit data for its AI engine instead of pu...
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Nintendo Sues Switch Piracy Reddit Mod for $4.5 Million
Nintendo is suing a Reddit moderator for $4.5 million, alleging they operated piracy platforms that distributed unauthorized Nintendo Switch games. The lawsuit claims the defendant reproduced and distributed thousands of copyrighted games through "Pirate Shops," leading to massive unauthorized di...
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Judge Slams $1.5B AI Settlement as Forced on Authors
A federal judge criticized a proposed $1.5 billion settlement for inadequately protecting authors and lacking transparency in Anthropic's alleged use of pirated books to train its AI systems. The settlement covers only a small fraction of the potential damages and works involved, while Anthropic ...
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Sony Sues Tencent for Alleged Horizon Game Copy
Sony has sued Tencent, alleging its upcoming game Light of Motiram copies key elements from Sony’s Horizon franchise, including character design and gameplay mechanics. Sony claims Tencent sought a licensing deal first, was rejected, and then created a "slavish clone," causing brand harm and sp...
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Getty's Historic AI Copyright Trial Kicks Off in UK
Generative AI is new enough that its training data seems to be constantly up for debate, and that debate is heading to the courts in the UK in a new, sure-to-be landmark case between Getty Images and Stability AI. In January 2023, Getty Images announced it was suing Stability AI for allegedly using its photos to train AI models without permission, violating existing copyright law. Getty brought a similar lawsuit against Stability AI in the U.S., according to Reuters, but it has yet to hit...
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Microsoft Removes AI Training Guide Using Pirated Harry Potter
Microsoft removed a technical blog post that demonstrated an Azure AI feature after it was criticized for linking to a pirated Harry Potter book series dataset for model training. The guide, authored by a senior product manager, suggested using the copyrighted novels as relatable examples to buil...
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Amazon to Launch AI Content Marketplace for Media Sites
Amazon is developing a marketplace for publishers to license content directly to AI developers, aiming to create a transparent alternative to legal disputes over data scraping. Major AI firms like Microsoft and OpenAI are pursuing structured licensing deals with publishers to secure premium train...
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Google Sues SerpApi for Alleged Search Scraping
Google is suing SerpApi under the DMCA, alleging it circumvented Google's SearchGuard system to scrape search results and licensed copyrighted content like images and product listings. The lawsuit could disrupt SEO and marketing tools that rely on SerpApi's data, as Google seeks an injunction and...
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Google Sues SerpApi for Scraping and Reselling Search Data
Google is suing SerpApi for allegedly bypassing security to scrape and resell copyrighted Google Search content, testing legal boundaries around web scraping. The lawsuit alleges SerpApi used sophisticated methods like cloaking and bot networks for large-scale data harvesting, which Google calls ...
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Meta Claims AI Training Porn Was for "Personal Use"
Meta is contesting a copyright lawsuit from Strike 3 Holdings, seeking dismissal by arguing the claims of illegal downloading of adult content for AI training are speculative and lack concrete evidence, with potential damages over $350 million. The lawsuit alleges Meta used corporate and hidden I...
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Redbox's Next Move: Piracy Lawsuits
Grove Street Partners has offered $100 million to acquire the IP litigation assets of Redbox and Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, shifting focus from revival to copyright enforcement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The assets grant the right to sue third parties, including Int...
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Authors Hail "Historic" Settlement in Anthropic Class Action
A landmark settlement has been reached between authors and Anthropic, potentially setting a precedent for the use of copyrighted works in AI training without permission or compensation. The case, certified as the largest copyright class action in history, involves up to seven million claimants wh...
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Nintendo Wins $2 Million From Switch Modder Who Represented Himself
Nintendo Switch modder Ryan Daly was ordered to pay Nintendo $2 million for selling devices that bypassed the company's technological safeguards. The products, including the MIG Switch and MIG Dumper, were found to have no significant commercial purpose other than circumventing protections and il...
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Nintendo Wins $2M Lawsuit Against Switch Modder for Piracy
Nintendo won a $2 million legal victory against a modder for selling hardware that enabled piracy on Switch consoles. The court permanently banned the defendant from modifying consoles or distributing circumvention tools, citing mass copyright infringement. This ruling is part of Nintendo's broad...
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X Accuses Music Publishers of 'Weaponizing' Copyright Takedowns
X has filed an antitrust lawsuit, accusing major music publishers of colluding to weaponize copyright law by flooding the platform with takedown requests to force unfavorable, industry-wide licensing agreements. The lawsuit claims this coordinated campaign abuses the DMCA's safe harbor provisions...
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Google Sues Firm for Massively Scraping Search Data
Google is suing SerpApi for allegedly bypassing its SearchGuard technology, which protects search results and partner content from automated scraping. SerpApi reportedly evaded these protections by disguising millions of daily automated queries as human traffic using simulated browsers and numero...
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