Federal Judge Allows Copyright Lawsuit Against Meta to Proceed
Authors sued Meta alleging that the company trained its Llama AI model on their copyrighted books without permission and removed copyright information to hide infringement. A federal judge ruled the copyright infringement claims can proceed to trial, dismissing only one portion of the suit.
What happened
Authors including Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, and Ta-Nehisi Coates sued Meta, alleging that Meta used their books without permission to train its Llama AI models and removed copyright management information from the books to conceal the infringement.
Judge Vince Chhabria ruled that the authors have adequately alleged copyright infringement and that Meta intentionally removed copyright management information to conceal that Llama was trained on copyrighted material. The judge dismissed claims under the California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act because the authors did not allege Meta accessed their computers or servers, only their published books.
Index analysis
Internal documents produced by the plaintiffs show that CEO Mark Zuckerberg approved AI training on pirated books and that Meta team members discussed the use of legally questionable content for AI training.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.