- Meta and CEO Mark Zuckerberg are facing a class action lawsuit filed by five publishing houses and author Scott Turow in a Manhattan federal court, alleging illegal use of millions of copyrighted works to train their artificial intelligence system, Llama.
- The plaintiffs accuse Meta of widespread copyright infringement, claiming the company "reproduced and distributed millions of copyrighted works without permission" and that Zuckerberg personally authorized and encouraged this conduct, violating copyright law.
- Authors whose works were allegedly used include Scott Turow, James Patterson, Donna Tartt, Joe Biden, and Pulitzer Prize winners Yiyun Li and Amanda Vaill, published by companies such as Elsevier, Cengage, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan, and McGraw Hill.
- Meta has stated it will "fight this lawsuit aggressively," arguing that training AI on copyrighted material can qualify as fair use, a legal defense that will be central to this and similar cases.
- This lawsuit is part of a growing legal battle between creators and tech companies over AI training, with other firms like OpenAI and Anthropic also facing infringement claims; Anthropic previously settled a similar class-action lawsuit for $1.5 billion.
IN FULL
