John Carreyrou and five writers sue Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, Meta, xAI, and Perplexity over pirated books in AI training

What happened: On December 22, 2025, six writers including New York Times investigative reporter and "Bad Blood" author John Carreyrou filed a federal copyright lawsuit against Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, Meta Platforms, xAI, and Perplexity, accusing the companies of training their models on pirated copies of their books. The plaintiffs deliberately did not seek class-action status, arguing that class settlements let AI companies "extinguish thousands upon thousands of high-value claims at bargain-basement rates." The case is the first copyright lawsuit to name xAI as a defendant. The filing came months after the proposed $1.5 billion Anthropic class settlement, which the plaintiffs said "seems to serve [the AI companies], not creators," noting class members would receive about 2% of the Copyright Act's $150,000-per-work statutory ceiling.

Why it matters to creators: The suit is a direct challenge to the class-action settlement model for AI training claims, pursuing individual high-value claims instead. It also brought the first training-data copyright allegations against xAI and Perplexity.

What is not yet known: No rulings on the merits; the case is still in early litigation.