Overview

• Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen Macknik filed the case in California federal court on Thursday, targeting the data used to build Apple’s new AI features.
• The SUNY Downstate professors allege their books, Champions of Illusion and Sleights of Mind, were among titles ingested without permission.
• The complaint says Apple relied on illegal “shadow libraries” of pirated books and other scraped, infringing materials to train Apple Intelligence.
• The plaintiffs seek unspecified monetary damages and a court order halting the alleged misuse, and they brought the case as a proposed class action.
• Apple and representatives for the plaintiffs did not comment, and the suit arrives as authors press similar claims industrywide, including Anthropic’s $1.5 billion settlement; the complaint also cites Apple’s more than $200 billion market-value jump after unveiling Apple Intelligence.