Artists sue AI giants over copyright theft — and some are winning
Authors, illustrators, and musicians fight back as courts weigh fair use.
A wave of lawsuits from authors, illustrators, and musicians is challenging the AI industry's practice of scraping copyrighted works to train generative models. Kirk Wallace Johnson, author of 'The Feather Thief,' discovered his books were pirated and fed to a chatbot, leading him to join the Susman Godfrey-led case against Anthropic. Sarah Andersen, creator of 'Sarah’s Scribbles,' filed a class action against Stability, Midjourney, DeviantArt, and Runway AI in 2023. Andrea Bartz, lead plaintiff in the Anthropic suit, described feeling 'violated' after seeing her novels used without consent. Sam Kogon is leading a case against AI music generator Suno.
The artists are optimistic about their individual cases but worry about Big Tech's disregard for creative work. The central legal battle revolves around whether using copyrighted material for AI training constitutes fair use. Some early decisions have favored artists, but the cases remain tied up in courts. Meanwhile, creators fear that AI companies treat art as mere data, ignoring the human effort behind it. The outcomes could set critical precedents for intellectual property rights in the age of generative AI.
- Kirk Wallace Johnson (author) joined a copyright suit against Anthropic after finding his books in an AI training dataset.
- Sarah Andersen's class action against Stability AI, Midjourney, and others has been in court since January 2023.
- Musician Sam Kogon leads a lawsuit against AI music generator Suno for using his songs without permission.
Why It Matters
These lawsuits could define legal boundaries for AI training, protecting creators' livelihoods and intellectual property.