News Summary

A group of high-profile authors, including Kai Bird and Jia Tolentino, have filed a lawsuit against Microsoft, claiming the tech giant used nearly 200,000 pirated books to train its Megatron AI model without permission. This lawsuit, filed in a New York federal court, is part of a series of legal actions by authors and copyright holders against technology companies such as Meta Platforms, Anthropic, and Microsoft-backed OpenAI for allegedly misusing copyrighted materials in AI training. The authors seek a court order to block Microsoft’s infringement and statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work. This case highlights the ongoing legal battles over the use of copyrighted content in creating generative AI products.