Authors sue Meta over copyrighted books used in Llama AI training
Authors in the United States and Ireland have sued Meta, alleging the company trained its Llama AI model on their copyrighted e-books without permission and removed copyright information to conceal the unauthorized use. The litigation includes claims that Meta accessed pirated materials through shadow libraries to train the system, with copyright law professors and publishing organizations backing the authors' fair use arguments.
What happened
Authors including Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, and Ta-Nehisi Coates filed a lawsuit against Meta in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging the company trained its Llama AI models on their e-books without permission and removed copyright information to hide the infringement.
Irish writers including Richard O'Rawe, Marie Jones, Martin Dillon, and Trevor Birney launched legal action against Meta in the High Court in Belfast, citing unauthorised reproduction, manipulation and commercial use of their works in Meta's AI system. The case seeks an immediate injunction to stop what the solicitor described as 'ongoing AI artistic larceny'.
An investigation by The Atlantic found Meta may have accessed millions of books through LibGen, a shadow library of pirated materials, to train Llama. Works by Irish writers including Seamus Heaney, Anne Enright, and Sally Rooney may have been used.
Reported impact
The authors allege that Meta violated their intellectual property rights and deliberately obscured copyright information on the e-books used for training.
Index analysis
Copyright law professors filed an amicus brief arguing that Meta's use of copyrighted works to train generative models is not transformative and constitutes commercial use that competes with the original works.
The International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers, the Copyright Alliance, and the Association of American Publishers submitted amicus briefs supporting the authors' position.
Governance controls
U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria allowed the case to move forward, ruling that the authors have standing to sue and have adequately alleged intentional removal of copyright information.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.