An investigative reporter best known for exposing fraud at Silicon Valley blood-testing startup Theranos sued Elon Musk’s xAI, Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, Meta Platforms and Perplexity on Monday for using copyrighted books without permission to train their artificial intelligence systems.

New York Times reporter and “Bad Blood” author John Carreyrou filed the lawsuit in California federal court with five other writers, accusing the AI companies of pirating their books and feeding them into the large language models (LLMs) that power the companies’ chatbots.

The lawsuit is one of several copyright cases brought by authors and other copyright owners against tech companies over the use of their work in AI training. The case is the first to name xAI as a defendant.

Spokespeople for the defendants did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit.

Unlike other pending cases, the writers are not seeking to band together in a larger class action – a type of lawsuit they said favours defendants by allowing them to negotiate a single settlement with many plaintiffs.

“LLM companies should not be able to so easily extinguish thousands upon thousands of high-value claims at bargain-basement rates,” the complaint said.

Anthropic reached the first major settlement in an AI-training copyright dispute in August, agreeing to pay $1.5 billion to a class of authors who said the company pirated millions of books.

The new lawsuit said class members in that case will receive “a tiny fraction (just 2%) of the Copyright Act’s statutory ceiling of $150,000” per infringed work.

Monday’s complaint was filed by attorneys at law firm Freedman Normand Friedland, including Kyle Roche, whom Carreyrou profiled in a 2023 New York Times article.

During a November hearing in the Anthropic class action, US District Judge William Alsup criticised a separate law firm Roche co-founded for gathering authors to opt out of the settlement in search of “a sweeter deal.” Roche declined to comment on Monday.

Carreyrou told the judge at a later hearing that stealing books to build its AI was Anthropic’s “original sin” and that the settlement did not go far enough.

President Trump on Monday announced plans for a new “Trump class” of battleships, marking the start of an expanded naval buildup and signalling increased scrutiny of defence contractors over production delays and cost overruns.

The announcement represents the latest example of the president rebranding an aspect of the federal government in his image. Trump – who has previously criticised the appearance of US warships – will be personally involved in the designs.

He said the ships will weigh more than 30,000 tons, larger than current destroyers, and be equipped with the latest technology, including artificial intelligence and directed energy lasers.

“We haven’t built a battleship since 1994. These cutting-edge vessels will be some of the most lethal surface warfare ships… other than our submarines,” Trump said.

Some US officials have warned that a failure to build new battleships in recent years has handed an advantage to economic and military rival China. Trump downplayed China’s influence on the decision, saying the expansion was “a counter to everybody.”

He said the naval expansion would also be paired with renewed pressure on defence contractors to speed up production and rein in costs. He said he will meet with major defence firms next week to address delays and overruns, and to examine whether executive compensation, stock buybacks and dividends are contributing to missed production targets.

“We don’t want to have executives making $50 million a year, issuing big dividends to everybody, and also doing buybacks” while production of F-35s and other jets languishes, Trump said.

Reuters reported last week that the administration was planning an executive order to limit dividends, buybacks and executive pay for defence contractors whose projects are over-budget and delayed.

Trump and the Pentagon have been complaining about the expensive, slow-moving and entrenched nature of the defence industry, promising dramatic changes that would make the production of war equipment more nimble.

• Moscow, Caracas condemn US actions as int’l law violations.
• UNSC to discuss rising US-Venezuela tensions on Tuesday.
• Washington accuses Venezuela of funding criminal activities.

Russia on Monday expressed “full support” for Venezuela as the South American country confronts a blockade of sanctioned oil tankers by US forces deployed in the Caribbean.

The pledge from Moscow, itself embroiled in the war in Ukraine, came on the eve of a UN Security Council (UNSC) meeting on Tuesday to discuss the mounting crisis between Caracas and Washington.

In a phone call, the foreign ministers of the allied nations blasted the US actions, which have included strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats and more recently, the seizure of two oil tankers.

A third ship was being pursued, a US official told AFP on Sunday.

“The ministers expressed their deep concern over the escalation of Washington’s actions in the Caribbean Sea, which could have serious consequences for the region and threaten international shipping,” the Russian foreign ministry said of the call between Sergei Lavrov and Venezuelan counterpart Yvan Gil.

“The Russian side reaffirmed its full support for and solidarity with the Venezuelan leadership and people in the current context,” it added in a statement.

US forces have since September launched strikes on boats that Washington claims, without providing evidence, were trafficking drugs in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean.

More than 100 people have been killed — some of them fishermen, according to their families and governments.

US President Donald Trump on December 16 also announced a blockade of “sanctioned oil vessels” sailing to and from Venezuela.

Trump claims Caracas under President Nicolas Maduro is using oil money to finance “drug terrorism, human trafficking, murder and kidnapping.”

He has also accused Venezuela of taking “all of our oil” — in an apparent reference to the country’s nationalisation of the petroleum sector, and said: “we want it back.”

Caracas, in turn, fears Washington is seeking regime change, and has accused Washington of “international piracy.”

Moscow’s statement said Lavrov and Gil agreed in their call to “coordinate their actions on the international stage, particularly at the UN, in order to ensure respect for state sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs.”

Russia and China, another Venezuela ally, backed Caracas’s request for a UNSC meeting to discuss what it called “the ongoing US aggression.”

Russia’s ‘hands full’

On Telegram, Venezuela’s Gil said he and Lavrov had discussed “the aggressions and flagrant violations of international law being perpetrated in the Caribbean: attacks on vessels, extrajudicial executions, and illicit acts of piracy carried out by the United States government.”

Gil said Lavrov had affirmed Moscow’s “full support in the face of hostilities against our country.”

Last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio brushed aside Moscow’s stated support for Caracas.

Washington, he said, was “not concerned about an escalation with Russia with regards to Venezuela” as “they have their hands full in Ukraine.”

US-Russia relations have soured in recent weeks as Trump has voiced frustration with Moscow over the lack of a resolution to the Ukraine war.

Gil on Monday also read a letter on state TV, signed by Maduro and addressed to UN member nations, warning the US blockade “will affect the supply of oil and energy” globally.