As 2025 winds down, the copyright lawsuits against U.S. AI companies are escalating.
John Carreyrou and 5 other book authors who opted out of the Bartz v. Anthropic class settlement filed an individual (not class) lawsuit against 6 U.S. AI companies for direct copyright infringement.
The Complaint is against nearly the entire U.S. AI industry:
- Anthropic
- OpenAI
- Meta
- xAI — Elon Musk’s company
- Perplexity AI.
Not sued in this suit but sued in other book author suits: Microsoft, NVIDIA, Apple, Salesforce, and Bloomberg.
Elon Musk joins the AI copyright party
This lawsuit is the first time Elon Musk’s xAI has been hit. Musk’s involvement is sure to bring a different dynamic than all the other copyright lawsuits against AI companies. Musk is the most high profile and most vocal founder/CEOs of all. Everyone else is a distant second.
Omnibus Copyright Suit v. AI Industry
But the most intriguing aspect to Carreyrou’s lawsuit is not Elon Musk.
Instead, it’s the industry-wide nature of suing nearly all the major U.S. AI companies in one omnibus copyright lawsuit.
At the very least, the omnibus copyright lawsuit shows the enormous stakes involved. The future of the AI industry may very well be determined by how courts resolve these copyright suits.
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