Shareholder derivative suit accuses Apple leadership of knowingly training AI models on pirated books and unauthorised YouTube videos

What happened: Shareholder Phil Rosen filed a derivative lawsuit (Rosen v. Cook, N.D. Cal., No. 5:26-cv-08463, filed 14 August 2026) against Apple's directors and officers, alleging they violated their fiduciary duties by knowingly or recklessly causing Apple to infringe copyright while training AI models. The complaint alleges Apple trained its models on datasets including pirated books and videos extracted from YouTube without authorisation, and that Apple now faces copyright infringement and Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act cases as a result, exposing it to potentially massive liability.

Why it matters to creators: this is one of the first shareholder derivative suits alleging specific training-data misconduct (pirated books, scraped YouTube video) against Apple. If the underlying allegations hold, they suggest Apple's model training implicated books and video creators' work without permission.

What is not yet known: the allegations are untested claims in a complaint — no court has ruled on them, Apple did not respond to the reporter's request for comment, and the case's current procedural status is unclear.