By Blake Brittain
Dec 17 (Reuters) - Adobe ADBE.O has been hit with a proposed class action over allegations that its artificial intelligence tools were trained on writers' copyrighted work without permission.
Author Elizabeth Lyon said in a complaint filed in California federal court on Tuesday that Adobe misused books including hers to train its AI models to respond to human prompts.
The lawsuit is the latest in a wave of high-stakes U.S. lawsuits brought by copyright owners against tech companies over their AI training and the first such case against Adobe.
Spokespeople for Adobe did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit on Wednesday. Lyon and her attorney also did not respond to a request for comment.
Lyon, who specializes in writing instructional books on how to market novels, said in the complaint that Adobe used pirated copies of her books and others to train its SlimLM small language models, which assist users with document-related tasks on mobile devices.
Lyon filed the lawsuit on behalf of a proposed class of all copyright owners whose works Adobe allegedly misused. She asked the court for an unspecified amount of monetary damages.
Dozens of authors have sued other AI-focused tech companies including OpenAI and Anthropic for alleged copyright infringement. Anthropic settled one of the class actions in August for $1.5 billion, the largest settlement ever recorded in a copyright case.
The Adobe case is Lyon v. Adobe Inc, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 5:25-cv-10732.
For Lyon: Eugene Turin of McGuire Law
For Adobe: attorney information not yet available
(Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington)
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