From ChatGPT to Deepfake Apps: A Running List of AI Lawsuits
The rising adoption of artificial intelligence (“AI”) across industries including fashion, retail, luxury, etc. that has come about in recent years is bringing with it no shortage of lawsuits, as parties look to navigate the budding issues that these relatively new models raise for companies and creators, alike. A growing number of lawsuits focus on generative AI, in particular, which refers to models that use neural networks to identify the patterns and structures within existing data to generate new content.
Google vs. Gemini Data
Google is being sued for trademark infringement for allegedly hijacking a smaller but older company’s name for a rebrand of its Bard chatbot. According to the complaint that it filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Gemini Data claims that in February 2024, “without any authorization by Gemini Data, Google publicly announced a re-branding of its BARD AI chatbot tool to ‘GEMINI.'”
Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson vs. Anthropic
Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson are suing Anthropic for copyright infringement in connection with its generative AI product, Claude. In the complaint that they lodged with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the author plaintiffs allege that Anthropic has built “a multibillion-dollar business by stealing hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books.”
Center for Investigative Reporting, Inc. vs. OpenAI and Microsoft
The Center for Investigative Reporting, Inc. (“CIR”) alleges that OpenAI and Microsoft are engaging in copyright infringement and violating the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (“DMCA”). In the complaint that it lodged with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, CIR claims that OpenAI and Microsoft are offering AI products that “are built on uncompensated and unauthorized use of the creative works of humans.”
Paul Lehrman and Linnea Sage vs. LOVO, Inc.
Voice-over actors Paul Lehrman and Linnea Sage have filed a right of publicity and false advertising lawsuit against LOVO, Inc., a startup in the business of selling “a text-to-speech subscription service that allows its clients to generate voice-over narrations. According to Lehrman and Sage’s complaint, LOVO enables “subscribing customers to upload a script into its AI-driven software … and generate a professional-quality voice-over based on certain criteria.”
Daily News LP et al. vs. Microsoft Corp. et al.
A group of eight news publications have filed a copyright infringement and trademark dilution lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI, alleging that they made unauthorized use of their copyrighted articles to fuel the commercialization of their generative artificial intelligence products, including ChatGPT and Copilot.
Zhang et al. vs. Google LLC and Alphabet Inc.
A group of visual artists have filed suit against Google LLC and its owner Alphabet Inc. in a federal court in Northern California, alleging that the tech titans made unauthorized use of their copyright-protected artworks to train its AI-powered image generator, Imagen.
Abdi Nazemian, Brian Keene, and Stewart O’Nan vs. NVIDIA Corp.
NVIDIA Corp. has landed on the receiving end of a copyright infringement complaint filed with the N.D. Cal., with author-plaintiffs Abdi Nazemian, Brian Keene, and Stewart O’Nan alleging that their copyright-protected books were included in the training dataset that NVI.
