Five publishing houses have filed a class action lawsuit against both Meta AI and Mark Zuckerberg. The lawsuit alleges that Meta trained its AI using copyrighted works without permission.
Who is bringing the case?
The companies which launched the lawsuit against Meta and Mark Zuckerberg are five of the world’s major publishing houses. They are Elsevier, Cengage, Hachette, Macmillan and McGraw Hill. The author Scott Turow is also a plaintiff in the case. His most well-known titles include Presumed Innocent and The Burden of Proof. The lawsuit names Meta AI as well as its CEO Mark Zuckerberg as the defendants.
What does the lawsuit allege?
The lawsuit alleges that Meta AI illegally used copyrighted works to train its Llama large language model. Importantly, the case also claims this was done at the direction of Mark Zuckerberg. That is why the company’s CEO has been personally named in the lawsuit. The legal documents describe Zuckerberg as “the guiding force behind Meta AI.”
Pirate websites
The lawsuit claims that Meta AI downloaded web scrapes of the internet without authorization. These web trawls also included content that you need a subscription to access. The plaintiffs further allege that Meta gathered torrented content from pirate sites which illegally share copyrighted works. The sites named in the action include LibGen and Anna’s Archive. A wide range of material was used, including textbooks, scientific articles and novels.
Class action
The lawsuit against Meta AI and Mark Zuckerberg is a class action. This means the plaintiff companies have asked the court for permission to represent a larger group of copyright owners. As a result, any specific titles named in the action are seen as examples of wider illegal use. If the case is won, all authors who may have been affected can claim damages.
Wholesale theft
David Shelley, the CEO of publishers Hachette, said, “Copyright is the bedrock of all creative industries. Meta, and Mark Zuckerberg, chose not to compensate rights holders for the use of their works and, instead, downloaded pirated works to train their models in contravention of the long-standing copyright principle that creators must be compensated for their works. Sanctioning such a wholesale theft would be devastating to all authors and to the entire publishing industry.”
What has Meta said?
Meta has issued a robust response and promised to “fight this lawsuit aggressively.” The company also claimed its use of copyrighted material hadn’t breached the law. A spokesperson for Meta said, “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.”
What we think
The lawsuit against Meta AI and Mark Zuckerberg is just the latest in a series of similar cases. What makes this one stand out is the naming of the CEO as a separate defendant. If Zuckerberg is found to have personally authorized any illegal activity, he could face severe penalties. Last year, the Amazon-backed AI company Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class action brought by authors. That matter related to more than seven million pirated books Anthropic used to train its Claude AI chatbot. However, Meta is clearly stating it believes it has done nothing wrong, so this case will not be settled any time soon.
