Meta’s AI endeavors have drawn another legal challenge. The social media company and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg are facing a class action lawsuit from five book publishers and one author on claims that it illegally used copyrighted works to train its Llama generative AI platform. The plaintiffs in the case are Hachette, Macmillan, McGraw Hill, Elsevier and Cengage; they’re joined by best-selling author Scott Turow.
“Defendants reproduced and distributed millions of copyrighted works without permission, without providing any compensation to authors or publishers, and with full knowledge that their conduct violated copyright law,” the complaint reads. “Zuckerberg himself personally authorized and actively encouraged the infringement.”
Meta has been sued multiple times regarding the materials it used to train Llama. A different group of authors attempted a copyright infringement lawsuit in 2023, but were ultimately unsuccessful in the effort. Zuckerberg’s involvement in reportedly encouraging use of copyrighted works was called out in a case brought by LibGen. And while it doesn’t appear to have reached court yet, a group of authors in the UK also raised the alarm last year about Meta potentially violating copyright laws.
In a similar lawsuit against Anthropic, a judge seemed unswayed by the copyright infringement argument, but did present piracy as an alternative way for authors to win damages from the AI company. Meta representative Dave Arnold echoed the lack of court support for copyright infringement in a statement to The New York Times about today’s class action: “AI is powering transformative innovations, productivity and creativity for individuals and companies, and courts have rightly found that training AI on copyrighted material can qualify as fair use.”
