Salesforce Faces Copyright Lawsuit Over AI Training Practices

Salesforce is in legal hot water. Authors are claiming the cloud-computing firm used their copyrighted books without permission. The goal was to train its artificial intelligence software, xGen.

Novelists Molly Tanzer and Jennifer Gilmore filed the proposed class action lawsuit. They allege Salesforce utilized thousands of pirated books to train its AI models.

The lawsuit points out an interesting contradiction. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has criticized AI companies for using "stolen" training data. He also suggested paying content creators would be simple.

The complaint argues Salesforce should fairly compensate copyright holders. Attorney Joseph Saveri emphasizes the need for transparency and fair compensation.

Salesforce isn't alone in facing such allegations. Authors, news outlets, and others have sued tech giants like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Meta. The core issue revolves around misusing material in AI training.

Anthropic previously reached a $1.5 billion settlement with authors in a similar case. The agreement highlights the growing tension between AI development and copyright law.

A Salesforce spokesperson declined to comment on the pending litigation. The company's silence leaves many questions unanswered.

The case underscores the importance of ethical AI development. It highlights the need to address copyright concerns when training artificial intelligence models.