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Alphabet shareholder sues Sundar Pichai and 12 others over training Google’s AI, including Lyria, on copyrighted works
Alphabet shareholder Phil Rosen has sued Sundar Pichai and 12 other directors and executives, alleging they built Google’s AI models using copyrighted material and voices without permission. Filed on 30 October in a Chicago federal court, the derivative lawsuit seeks to make the leaders answer to Alphabet for the alleged strategy and its costs.
The complaint says Google used recordings, compositions and lyrics to train music models including Lyria, Lyria 2, Lyria 3, Mulan and MusicLM. It alleges MusicLM was trained on five million audio clips, totalling 280,000 hours, without identifying the recordings, rights holders or licences. Rosen seeks unspecified damages for Alphabet, repayment of compensation and stronger copyright and biometric privacy oversight; any damages would go to the company, not Rosen.
In short
- An Alphabet shareholder has sued Pichai and 12 others over Google’s AI training.
- The complaint alleges MusicLM used five million clips totalling 280,000 hours.
- Rosen seeks damages for Alphabet and stronger oversight.
Steelman: both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
If the allegations are substantiated, training AI on music and voices without permission may unfairly take value from creators and expose people’s voices to use they did not authorise. Shareholders could reasonably argue that directors should have required stronger rights checks and privacy oversight, since legal disputes and weak governance may also harm Alphabet.
The case against
Google and its directors could argue that using material to train models can be transformative and support useful innovation, and that copyright law does not automatically require a licence for every training use. They may also dispute the allegations or contend that existing safeguards and legal interpretations were reasonable, while warning that broad liability could make AI development more costly and limit new creative tools.
Explained simply
Alphabet is the parent company of Google, and its board oversees the company’s senior leaders, including chief executive Sundar Pichai. A shareholder can bring a derivative lawsuit on a company’s behalf, seeking to address alleged harm to the company rather than to receive any award personally.
Google develops AI systems that learn patterns from large collections of material, including music and audio. Copyright law governs how recordings, compositions and lyrics can be used, while voice recordings may also raise privacy questions; the rules can depend on how the material was obtained and used.
The case concerns whether Google had permission to use protected material to train its music models, and whether Alphabet’s leaders properly oversaw that work. Its outcome could affect the company’s finances and how it manages copyright and voice data in AI development.