The CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, seeks to avoid appearing in a statement in a copyright lawsuit against OpenAI.

Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, is trying to avoid being questioned in a copyright case against OpenAI, according to recent court documents. In response, the plaintiff's attorneys, the Authors Guild, have filed a motion to compel Amodei and his co-founder, Benjamin Mann, to testify. Representatives of the Authors Guild argue that Amodei and Mann, who previously worked at OpenAI, have “unique and firsthand knowledge of highly relevant information for this case.”

The Authors Guild, which represents authors such as John Grisham, George R.R. Martin, and Sylvia Day in this lawsuit, issued subpoenas to Amodei and Mann in 2024 requesting their testimony and communications from their time at OpenAI. The lawsuit was filed in September 2023 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. So far, there has been no response from the Authors Guild lawyers, Amodei, or Mann; Anthropic has also not commented.

The previously undisclosed motion and subpoenas suggest that the numerous copyright lawsuits accusing OpenAI of training ChatGPT with stolen material are gaining greater relevance. The discovery phase in the Authors Guild case, filed in 2023, is scheduled to conclude in April. Meanwhile, it has been reported that OpenAI is in talks to secure approximately $40 billion.

Amodei and Mann had agreed in June 2024 to participate in seven-hour depositions after receiving the subpoenas. They have been preparing by gathering text messages, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger communications as part of the discovery process. However, the attorneys for the Anthropic co-founders requested to postpone the testimony until late 2024, intending to coordinate it with another case against OpenAI. This consolidated case includes separate actions from comedian Sarah Silverman, author Michael Chabon, and author Paul Tremblay.

Recently, Amodei and Mann's attorneys have sought to completely avoid the interrogations. On January 16, 2025, they informed the Authors Guild that Amodei “is not available to be questioned,” according to an email attached to the motion. Amodei's attorneys stated that the CEO's schedule is too demanding, invoking what is known as the "apex doctrine." For his part, Mann has expressed his desire to avoid testifying in the Authors Guild case unless it is coordinated with an interrogation in the consolidated case and limited to four hours. His legal team has argued that he has two young children and a family member with a serious medical diagnosis. Additionally, his legal team reported on January 16 that Mann would only be willing to testify if the Guild agreed not to question Amodei. Mann has since filed a motion to quash the subpoena and interrogation in the consolidated case against OpenAI.