Apple Hit with Second Lawsuit Alleging AI Training Used Pirated Books from “Shadow Libraries”

Apple is facing a second class-action lawsuit alleging that its AI training used pirated books via “shadow libraries” and web-crawling software, with Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen Macknik, neuroscience professors at the State University of New York Downstate Health Sciences University, claiming their copyrighted works were accessed without permission. The suit follows another filing a month earlier by a separate group of authors who also allege training data used published works without consent.

The article notes that Apple is not alone, as OpenAI and The New York Times have pursued similar copyright-related actions, with claims that such actions could shape precedents in AI development; according to The New York Times, OpenAI faces comparable litigation. Earlier this year, Anthropic agreed to a $1.5 billion settlement with more than 500,000 authors over the unauthorized use of copyrighted materials in AI training datasets.

The piece discusses the broader implications for licensing and the potential impact on training costs and the pace of AI innovation. It was published on 14 October 2025.