Former Amazon AI lead alleges she was told to ignore copyright rules to win AI race for Alexa

What happened

In a California lawsuit against Amazon, former Amazon executive and AI researcher Dr. Viviane Ghaderi alleges she was targeted and punished after raising concerns that Amazon leadership directed her to violate the company's own copyright policies and applicable law in the use of copyrighted training data for AI models. The project related to search quality for the Alexa team.

Allegations

The complaint states that after returning from leave, Ghaderi told Amazon's Legal Department that her leaders had directed her to violate internal copyright policies; that in March 2023 a manager (Styskin) rejected her concerns and instructed her to ignore the internal policies in pursuit of better results because 'everyone else' — i.e., other AI companies — 'is doing it.' The underlying lawsuit also includes unrelated workplace discrimination, retaliation, harassment, and wrongful-termination claims.