Technology giant Apple has been hit with a proposed class action lawsuit in the United States, with two authors accusing the company of illegally using their copyrighted books to train its artificial intelligence (AI) systems.

The lawsuit, filed on Friday in the federal court for Northern California by authors Grady Hendrix and Jennifer Roberson, claims Apple copied their works without consent, credit, or compensation.

“Apple has not attempted to pay these authors for their contributions to this potentially lucrative venture,” the complaint stated.

Neither Apple nor lawyers for the plaintiffs immediately responded to requests for comment.

The case adds to a growing wave of legal challenges from writers, publishers, and media companies against major technology firms accused of misusing copyrighted materials in AI training.

Just this week, AI startup Anthropic disclosed it had agreed to a $1.5 billion settlement to resolve a class action from authors who alleged their books were used without permission to train its Claude chatbot—reportedly the largest publicly disclosed copyright settlement in history.

In June, Microsoft faced a similar lawsuit over claims that it used copyrighted books to train its Megatron AI model. Meta Platforms and OpenAI, Microsoft’s partner in AI development, have also been sued over alleged misuse of copyrighted materials.

The lawsuit against Apple specifically accuses the company of training its “OpenELM” large language models on a dataset of pirated books, which allegedly included works by Hendrix and Roberson.

The case underscores the escalating legal battle over intellectual property rights in the fast-moving AI industry, where questions about copyright, fair use, and compensation remain unsettled.