Here are additional lawsuit updates.
AI Lawsuits: July 2025 Updates
July 28 - Porn Lawsuit vs. Meta: Facebook parent Meta pirated porn sites for years to train its AI models, a lawsuit alleges. (Source: Ars Technica)
July 22 - OpenAI Wins Legal Case: OpenAI convinced a federal judge in California that a Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur violated its trademark rights by using the name "Open AI" in commerce. The case involved a startup called Open Artificial Intelligence -- which launched several months before OpenAI's first funding round, the report said. (Source: Reuters)
July 17 - Potential Class Action Case: A California federal judge ruled that three authors suing Anthropic for copyright infringement can represent writers nationwide whose books Anthropic allegedly pirated to train its AI system. (Source: Reuters)
AI Lawsuits: June 2025 Updates
June 25 - Meta Wins Lawsuit: A federal judge ruled for Meta Platforms against a group of authors who had argued that Meta use of their books without permission to train its AI system infringed their copyrights. (Source: Reuters)
June 25 - Lawsuit vs. Microsoft: A group of authors claim Microsoft used their books without permission to train its Megatron AI model, a new lawsuit alleges. (Source: Reuters)
June 24 - Anthropic Trial in December 2025?: In a test case for the AI industry, a federal judge has ruled that Anthropic didn’t break the law by training its chatbot Claude on millions of copyrighted books. But the company is still on the hook and must now go to trial over how it acquired those books by downloading them from online “shadow libraries” of pirated copies. Bottom line: Anthropic must still go to trial in December 2025 over its alleged theft of their works, the report said. (Source: Associated Press)
June 11-12 - Image Lawsuit vs Midjourney: Disney and NBCUniversal filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Midjourney, alleging Midjourney used trademarked characters (e.g., Elsa, Minions, Darth Vader, Homer Simpson) to train Midjourney's image model and produce infringing artwork. (Source: The Times)
June 5 - Reddit vs. Anthropic: Reddit filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, alleging that Anthropic scraped millions of Reddit comments—over 100,000 times—even after being denied permission—to train Claude, without licensing, breaching its user agreement and robots.txt settings. (Source: TechCrunch)
AI Lawsuits: May 2025 Updates
May 16 - Anthropic Legal Error: Anthropic’s apologized for a legal error involving the company's defense against a lawsuit filed by Concord Music Group. The plaintiffs alleged that Anthropic's legal team used an "expert report" that contained fabricated information from AI. Anthropic said the error was due to AI assisted citation formatting rather than an intentional fabrication. (Source: Music Business World.)
May 16 - AI and Suicide Court Ruling: A Florida federal court allowed a wrongful-death lawsuit to proceed against Character.AI (and Google) in the case brought by the mother of a 14-year-old who died by suicide. She alleges the teen became emotionally dependent on a “Game of Thrones”–style AI character. (Source: The Associated Press)
May 6 - Lawsuit vs. Microsoft: Cerence filed a copyright infringement and breach of contract lawsuit against Microsoft and Nuance Communications. The lawsuit AI-focused lawsuit involves text-to-speech technology.
May 6 - Elon Musk vs. OpenAIO: Musk will maintain his lawsuit against OpenAi, even though the ChatGPT software maker abandoned plans to pursue a for-profit business model, Reuters reported.
May 1 - Judge Perspectives in Meta Lawsuit: The Judge in the Meta case warned AI could 'obliterate' markets for original works of content. (Source: Reuters)
AI Lawsuits: April 2025 Updates
April 25 - Ziff Davis Lawsuit vs OpenAI: Ziff Davis, the parent company of several digital media brands, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI for copyright infringement. (Source: Courthouse News)
April 22 - Content Agreement: The Washington Post inked a deal with OpenAI allowing ChatGPT to display, summarize and quote the newspaper’s content. (Source: CNBC)
April 17 - Musk vs OpenAI: The California attorney general has opted out of joining Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI.
April 11 - Lawsuit vs. Meta: A group of professors specializing in copyright law has filed an amicus brief in support of authors suing Meta for allegedly training its Llama AI models on e-books without permission. (Source: TechCrunch)
April 11 - Lawsuit vs OpenAI: A dozen former OpenAI employees filed a legal brief backing co-founder Musk's lawsuit aimed at keeping the non-profit status of OpenAI. However, DOGE staff have not requested nor been granted access to sensitive bank information, the report said. (Source: Reuters)
April 9 - Counter Lawsuit: OpenAI filed suit against Musk, claiming the world’s richest person has “tried every tool available to harm” the AI company, CNBC reported.
April 4 - Research Finding: A new study appears to lend credence to allegations that OpenAI trained at least some of its AI models on copyrighted content. Researchers at the University of Washington, the University of Copenhagen, and Stanford co-authored the study. (Source: TechCrunch)
April 4 - New York Times vs OpenAI: A judge denied OpenAI's motion to dismiss the NYT's copyright claims. (Source: Ars Technica)
April 4 - Musk vs. OpenAI: Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI will go to a jury trial in spring 2026, the federal judge presiding over the case decided. (Source: Reuters)
More: Continue to next page for earlier lawsuit updates.
It is important to understand that while AI technology brings many benefits, there are also legal issues that need to be resolved, especially in relation to copyright. Hopefully, all parties can find a fair and balanced solution so that innovation can continue to thrive without compromising the rights of content creators. Thank you for the very informative information!
is the page not being updated anymore? i come back here every few weeks or so lol
Hi Bruno: I unplugged for a portion of May 2025 to rethink some of Sustainable Tech Partner's content strategy. The timeline is now updated to reflect milestones through June 15, 2025. Thank you for coming back for the updates, and for taking the time to post a comment. Best,
-jp
Can you update again to reflect the current status as of July?
Dear AvidReader: Thank you for your readership and the nudge. We've updated the article as of July 29. 2025. -jp
This timeline is great and all, but it doesn't answer a bigger question I've been pondering, which is how do we stop the likes of Jensen Huang, Lisa Su, Sam Altman and others from just having their way unchecked. The latest news has been about their seemingly uncontrolled data center construction projects causing harm to the residents and neighbors of said projects. People are complaining about their health being impacted and difficulties with greatly increased electricity bills. We've got the whole thing going on now with the RAM and storage prices just going up and up and up with no obvious limit in sight. How do we stop these trillion-dollar corporations cold? How do we make them stop with all this? Surely there has to be a way to force them to heel. How do we put these damned CEOs down, once and for all, for the good of mankind and the planet? Those are my concerns and thanks for any replies.
Hi Stephen: Thanks for your readership and comments. I understand and empathize with many of your concerns. But I don't see those executives & their corporations as all bad or all good. I believe there are nuances.
I don't see a need to "put these damned CEOs down, once and for all, for the good of mankind and the planet," as you state.
I do see valid concerns about electricity bills, seemingly uncontrolled data center projects, health, and rising technology prices.
In those areas, a growing number of towns and municipalities are voting no or pushing back against data center initiatives. As USA Today reported, Surging electricity rates put data centers on 2026 ballot.
And Microsoft, for instance, has vowed to pay its own way to ensure Microsoft data centers don't trigger rising electricity prices for local communities.
I'd encourage you to reach out to your local government representatives to express your concerns. And to vote in every election. And to join grass roots groups that are organizing against runaway Big Tech projects.
But I'd also encourage you and all readers to gather all sides of the story. How are certain data centers and their associated applications truly helping humankind? How are certain sustainable IT businesses ensuring that data centers mitigate or at least minimize their environmental impact?
Thousands of hardworking, ethical people work for Big Tech, midsize tech and small tech. I encourage our readers to keep those hardworking folks and their authentic missions in mind: Scientific research. Climate research. Health care. And so much more.
Thank you again for taking the time to express your concerns and views.
-jp
This timeline is incredibly insightful! It’s fascinating to see how various tech giants are navigating the legal landscape surrounding generative AI. The impact of these lawsuits could shape the future of AI development and usage, and I'm especially interested in how the outcomes will influence ethical guidelines in the industry. Thanks for compiling such a detailed resource!
Thanks for taking the time to read the timeline and post a comment. We'll strive to keep the timeline updates coming.
-jp