Apple has been hit with a new proposed class action in the United States that accuses the company of using pirated books and other copyrighted materials to train Apple Intelligence, its suite of artificial intelligence features.

The complaint, filed on 9 October in a California federal court by neuroscientists Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen Macknik of SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University in Brooklyn, alleges Apple relied on “shadow libraries” and “web-crawling software” that provided access to illegally copied works, including the professors’ books Champions of Illusion and Sleights of Mind.

The filing asserts Apple’s training datasets comprised “thousands of pirated books” and broader web-scraped content, and seeks unspecified monetary damages alongside an order to stop the alleged misuse.

The case arrives about a month after a separate group of authors brought a similar lawsuit against Apple over claims of copyright infringement in AI training. Coverage of the latest action noted the professors allege Apple “used their registered works without authorisation” and trained its models using “shadow libraries” that enable access to pirated, copyrighted books.

The complaint also points to Apple’s market reaction to its AI rollout, stating that “the day after Apple officially introduced Apple Intelligence, the company gained more than $200 billion in value: ‘the single most lucrative day in the history of the company’.”

The neuroscientists argue Apple built Apple Intelligence on datasets that included illegally copied books and other materials scraped from the internet, and that the case adds to a growing wave of litigation targeting major technology firms over the use of copyrighted works in AI training. It also notes the authors seek an injunction to bar further use of their materials.

The lawsuit joins other high-profile actions against technology companies including OpenAI, Microsoft and Meta over the unauthorised use of content to train AI models. Earlier this year, Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a lawsuit brought by authors over training of its Claude chatbot, a deal that could inform expectations around financial exposure for firms facing similar claims.

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