Adobe Inc. is facing a proposed class-action lawsuit in a California federal court, alleging that the company utilized copyrighted books without authors’ consent to train its SlimLM artificial intelligence models. The complaint asserts that Adobe incorporated works from the RedPajama and Common Crawl datasets, which include a substantial number of copyrighted texts, into its AI training processes.
This legal action follows a similar lawsuit filed in December 2025 by author Elizabeth Lyon, who accused Adobe of using her books, along with those of other authors, to train its AI models. Lyon’s suit contends that Adobe’s SlimLM models were trained on SlimPajama-627B, an open-source dataset derived from RedPajama, which allegedly contains the Books3 dataset—a collection of nearly 200,000 books obtained without proper authorization. The lawsuit claims that Adobe’s use of these datasets constitutes copyright infringement, as the company did not seek permission from the authors to use their works in AI training. ([techcrunch.com](https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/17/adobe-hit-with-proposed-class-action-accused-of-misusing-authors-work-in-ai-training/?utm_source=openai))
The RedPajama and Books3 datasets have been at the center of multiple legal disputes. In September 2025, a lawsuit against Apple alleged that the company used copyrighted material from these datasets to train its Apple Intelligence model. Similarly, in October 2025, Salesforce faced a lawsuit claiming it employed RedPajama for AI training purposes. ([techcrunch.com](https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/17/adobe-hit-with-proposed-class-action-accused-of-misusing-authors-work-in-ai-training/?utm_source=openai))
These cases underscore a growing concern within the creative community regarding the use of copyrighted materials in AI development. Authors and content creators argue that tech companies are leveraging their works without consent, credit, or compensation, raising significant ethical and legal questions about intellectual property rights in the age of artificial intelligence.
As the legal landscape evolves, the outcomes of these lawsuits could have profound implications for the AI industry, potentially influencing how companies source and utilize data for training models. The balance between technological advancement and the protection of intellectual property rights remains a contentious issue, with courts increasingly called upon to navigate these complex disputes.