Copyright disputes still dominate litigation; experts expect rapid adoption of AI agents to fuel new wave of lawsuits over fraud, privacy, discrimination, accountability.
The number of lawsuits involving artificial intelligence (AI) companies has risen sharply over the past five years. Individuals, businesses, and government agencies have filed cases against technology giants including OpenAI, Meta Platforms*, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Anthropic. According to experts interviewed by Valor, the volume of litigation is expected to continue growing, particularly as AI agents become more widely adopted. These software systems, designed to perform tasks autonomously, are increasingly blurring the line between decisions made by humans and those made by machines.
The number of lawsuits filed worldwide against AI companies jumped from three in 2020 to 200 as of July 31, according to AI Lawsuit Tracker, a Sheridan, Wyoming-based platform specializing in AI-related litigation. One of the project’s coordinators told Valor that the database curates the most significant AI-related legal disputes worldwide. These include copyright infringement claims over AI model training, lawsuits involving injuries and deaths linked to chatbots, and privacy violations, among others.
Cases brought by individuals account for the largest share of lawsuits in the AI Lawsuit Tracker database, representing 48.5% of the total. Plaintiffs include authors, artists, musicians, voice actors, journalists, job applicants, employees, consumers, patients, and the estates of deceased individuals.
Of all lawsuits compiled by the platform over the past six years, 48.5% were filed by individuals, 43.5% by companies, and 8% by state and federal government entities.
A separate, broader survey identified 279 AI-related lawsuits in the United States alone between February 2022 and August 4 of this year. The tracking, conducted by Atlanta-based law firm Fisher Phillips, covers cases involving AI in intellectual property disputes, hiring processes, electronic monitoring, and other areas, with 66% of the cases filed in federal courts.
According to AI Lawsuit Tracker, OpenAI faces the largest number of lawsuits, with 41 cases. Among them is the lawsuit filed by The New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft in December 2023, widely viewed as a landmark copyright dispute between news publishers and generative AI companies. The newspaper alleges billions of dollars in damages from the unauthorized use of its content to train ChatGPT.
After OpenAI, the companies facing the largest number of lawsuits are Alphabet, Google’s parent company, and Meta Platforms, the owner of Facebook*, Instagram*, and WhatsApp, with 19 cases each. Microsoft faces 15 lawsuits, followed by Anthropic with 13 and Perplexity with 11.
Copyright, trademark, and image-rights disputes account for 65.5% of the lawsuits tracked by AI Lawsuit Tracker — 131 cases as of the end of July. Other common claims involve unfair competition, privacy violations, defamation, wrongful death, and misuse of AI agents.
In Brazil, cases involving the unauthorized use of copyrighted content and intellectual property by AI models have also drawn attention.
“The most significant case in the country involved Folha de S.Paulo’s lawsuit against OpenAI over the use of the newspaper’s content to train AI models,”
said Tania Liberman, a partner in the technology and innovation practice at law firm Cescon Barrieu. The case was resolved through an agreement under which OpenAI agreed to compensate the Folha media group for the use of its content.
“In Brazil, our copyright legislation already addresses this issue well, and there is no room for the ‘fair use’ doctrine,”
Liberman said, referring to the U.S. legal principle that allows limited use of copyrighted material without authorization.
Another growing concern in Brazil is the increasingly sophisticated use of AI in banking fraud. Among 81 civil lawsuits mentioning AI before the São Paulo State Court of Justice (TJSP), 58% involve financial scams, according to a survey conducted through September 2025 by Cescon Barrieu, which represents technology companies, AI developers, social media platforms, and media organizations.
“These cases do not yet involve manipulated images, but the advance of deepfakes will further increase the risk of financial fraud,”
Liberman warned. She also highlighted cybersecurity as another major concern.
“A hacker attack on an AI platform that stores sensitive conversation histories would create a very serious privacy problem,”
she said.
After financial fraud, AI-related cases before the TJSP involve social media algorithms in 11.1% of cases and AI tools used in decision-making processes in 7.41%.
Litigation involving the use of AI agents to commit fraud is expected to surge in the coming months, increasing risks for both individuals and businesses, according to Renato Opice Blum, a lawyer, economist, and professor at ESPM, FAAP, and Insper.
“It is very easy to delegate authority and grant a power of attorney to software code, but doing so is highly risky,” said Blum, who has been discussing the issue in his classes. “In the corporate environment, companies implementing these tools have an obligation to explain to employees what AI agents are, the risks they pose, and how they should be used,”
he said.
“It is similar to explaining the proper use of a corporate email account.”
Employment-related lawsuits involving AI are also expected to become increasingly common. Meta is currently facing a lawsuit filed by former employees in July over its alleged use of AI tools to determine which workers would be laid off. The company announced in May that it would cut 8,000 jobs, or about 10% of its global workforce.
According to the complaint, the company’s internal algorithms allegedly ignored medical leave and other legally protected absences, unreasonably affecting employees with disabilities, pregnant workers, and individuals recovering from health conditions, amounting to discrimination.
“The Meta case puts the need for transparency in the use of AI algorithms at the center of the debate,”
said Patricia Peck, founding partner at Peck Advogados and a specialist in digital law.
“When a company uses an algorithm to make decisions about hiring, promotions, or dismissals, how does it ensure that the process is free from discriminatory bias?”
Peck asked. She added that companies should be transparent about the extent of human review and oversight of AI-generated recommendations.
“It is important to note that AI brings efficiency, but it does not eliminate the responsibility of those who choose to adopt it,”
she said.
*Together with its subsidiaries Facebook and Instagram, it is banned and designated as extremist in Russia
Source: Valor International
