Adobe has been sued in a proposed class action suit over using books to train its AI software. The lead plaintiff in the case is Art Kleiner, author of the 1996 book The Age of Heretics: Heroes, Outlaws, and the Forerunners of Corporate Change, which was included in the Books3 dataset. Books3 is part of the SlimPajama dataset, which Adobe used to train its “SlimLM small language models,” which provides “document assistance tasks on mobile devices,” according to the complaint. “This runs contrary to Adobe’s outspoken stance on ethical AI development and use” for its AI image generator, Firefly, the […]
Legal
US Not Appropriate Venue for Either Case Against Gaiman, Palmer, Court Finds
On Friday, a US District Court judge in Massachusetts dismissed another case related to allegations of sexual assault by Neil Gaiman, on the basis of jurisdiction. The case was brought by Scarlett Pavlovich against Gaiman’s ex-wife, Amanda Palmer. Pavlovich claims Palmer engaged in human trafficking and conspiracy when Pavlovich worked as the couple’s nanny in New Zealand, as well as “negligence against Palmer for introducing plaintiff to Gaiman and failing to warn her of the unreasonable danger he posed,” according to a court filing. The court granted Palmer’s motion to dismiss, noting that Massachusetts is not an appropriate venue. “Plaintiff […]
Maya Angelou Estate Joins Utah Book Banning Suit
The estate of Maya Angelou has joined Kurt Vonnegut’s estate in its case against Utah’s Sensitive Materials Law. The ACLU first filed the suit on behalf of the Vonnegut’s estate in January. The amended complaint is a response to the banning of Angelou’s book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by two school districts in Utah, with authorities currently considering a statewide ban of the book. Utah’s Sensitive Materials Law, passed in 2022 and amended in 2024, requires public schools and their libraries to remove certain “inappropriate” books or books with any reference to sex. Stephanie Floyd-Johnson, Angelou’s daughter-in-law […]
Neil Gaiman Denies Allegations Again, Has Written New Book
More than a year and a half after sexual assault allegations against Neil Gaiman first surfaced, the author has once again taken to his blog to deny the claims — and share that he has written a new book. “I thought it was going to be a fairly short project when I began it, but it’s looking like it’s going to be the biggest thing I’ve done since American Gods. It’s already much longer than The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and it’s barely finished wiping its boots and hanging up its coat.” (You may recall that we reported last December […]
Google Wishes Publishers Would “File Their Own Case” Instead of Joining Writers’
In a new filing, Google opposes Hachette and Cengage’s motion to join a class action of writers against the tech giant. Google argues that the publishers’ intervention is “untimely” since they could have joined the “widely reported suit” any time after it began in July 2023, including when Google subpoenaed Hachette in March 2025. Allowing the publishers to intervene in the case “would massively disrupt the proceedings and prejudice Google,” the company says. “If book publishers Cengage and Hachette…want to present ‘their own evidence and arguments’ about how Google supposedly infringed their copyrights, …they can file their own case,” the […]
Newly Released Documents Shed Light on Anthropic’s Plan to Scan Every Book
A set of unredacted and less-redacted documents from the Anthropic case have been released, revealing more details on the tech company’s secret plan to copy every book in existence to teach their AI tool “how to write well.” “Project Panama is our effort to destructively scan all the books in the world,” Anthropic said in the filings, as reported by the Washington Post. “We don’t want it to be known that we are working on this.” In Project Panama, Anthropic estimated that there are approximately 130 million unique books in the world, including 40 million that are able to be […]