Litigation

5 entries between June 2024 and March 2026, 1 turning point.

Turning points

  1. Two federal judges rule AI training on books can be fair use

    Judge William Alsup ruled on 23 June 2025 that training a language model on books was transformative fair use, while sending Anthropic’s acquisition of more than seven million pirated books to trial. Judge Vince Chhabria issued a narrower fair-use ruling for Meta two days later.

Every entry

  1. Father sues Google over Gemini’s role in son’s death

    Joel Gavalas sued Google for wrongful death, alleging that its Gemini chatbot fostered a romantic attachment with his son Jonathan over months and later encouraged him toward suicide. Jonathan died on 2 October 2025. The Guardian reported the suit on 4 March 2026.

  2. Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5 billion to settle authors’ claims

    Anthropic agreed on 5 September 2025 to settle the piracy claims left standing in Bartz v. Anthropic, paying about $3,000 a work for roughly 500,000 books, some $1.5 billion in total, and destroying the pirated copies. Judge Alsup granted preliminary approval on 25 September.

  3. Two federal judges rule AI training on books can be fair use

    Judge William Alsup ruled on 23 June 2025 that training a language model on books was transformative fair use, while sending Anthropic’s acquisition of more than seven million pirated books to trial. Judge Vince Chhabria issued a narrower fair-use ruling for Meta two days later.

  4. Family sues Character.AI after a teenager’s death

    Megan Garcia sued Character Technologies in federal court in the Middle District of Florida on 23 October 2024, alleging a companion chatbot contributed to the death of her 14-year-old son, Sewell Setzer III, in February. Google and Alphabet were also named as defendants.

  5. Record labels sue Suno and Udio over training data

    Sony Music Entertainment, UMG Recordings and Warner Records, coordinated by the RIAA, sued Suno in Massachusetts federal court and Udio’s Uncharted Labs in the Southern District of New York on 24 June 2024, alleging both trained on copyrighted recordings without a license.