Salesforce (CRM) has been sued by authors Molly Tanzer and Jennifer Gilmore, who claim the company used their copyrighted books without consent to train its xGen AI language models. The proposed class-action lawsuit, filed Wednesday, alleges Salesforce relied on thousands of pirated works to build its artificial intelligence tools.
Attorney Joseph Saveri, representing the plaintiffs, said the case aims to hold tech companies accountable for transparency and fair compensation when using copyrighted material for AI training. “Our clients are simply asking to be fairly paid when their creative work is used,” Saveri said.
The complaint also cites Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff’s past comments condemning AI firms that used “stolen” data to train their models. “Benioff is right,” the filing states, arguing that his company should follow the same ethical standards he has publicly promoted.
Salesforce declined to comment on the lawsuit.
The case follows a wave of similar copyright actions against OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, and Anthropic, which agreed to a $1.5 billion settlement in August with a separate group of authors. Legal experts say the growing number of such lawsuits could reshape how AI companies source and compensate for data used to train large language models.
