Meta Platforms (META.O) is facing serious accusations from a group of high-profile authors, including Ta-Nehisi Coates and comedian Sarah Silverman, who allege that the company knowingly used pirated versions of their copyrighted books to train its artificial intelligence systems. The allegations, revealed in new court filings on Wednesday, claim that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg approved the use of these pirated works to power its AI language model, Llama.
The authors, who filed a lawsuit against Meta in 2023, argue that the company misused their copyrighted material without permission. Court documents from the discovery phase of the case reveal that Meta was aware the books it used were pirated. The authors claim Meta accessed the pirated dataset LibGen, which contains millions of illegal works, and distributed it through peer-to-peer torrent systems.
In internal communications, Meta executives reportedly expressed concern over the use of LibGen, with some stating it was a “dataset we know to be pirated.” However, the authors contend that Mark Zuckerberg approved the decision to proceed with using these materials in training its AI systems.
The legal battle is part of a broader wave of lawsuits accusing companies of using copyrighted material without consent to develop AI technologies. Meta has previously argued that its use of these materials falls under fair use, but the authors are pressing forward with their claims.
During a court hearing on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria allowed the authors to file an updated complaint, though he expressed doubts about the strength of some of their claims, including those related to computer fraud and the stripping of copyright management information (CMI). This case, if successful, could have significant implications for how companies use copyrighted content to train artificial intelligence.
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