Publishers Sue Meta over AI Training on Copyrighted Works
Major publishers Elsevier, Cengage, Hachette, Macmillan and McGraw Hill have filed suit against Meta in federal court in New York, alleging that the technology company pirated millions of works, from textbooks and scientific articles to novels, and used them without permission to train its Llama artificial intelligence (AI) model.
Author Scott Turow is also party to the suit, which is a proposed class action representing a broader range of copyright owners.
Among the works Meta is alleged to have used without permission are "The Fifth Season" and "Wild Robot." The plaintiffs are seeking unspecified financial damages. Maria Pallante, president of the Association of American Publishers, said that "Meta’s mass-scale infringement isn’t public progress".
Meta rejects the accusations, arguing that AI training on protected material may fall under the principle of fair use. "We will fight this lawsuit aggressively", the company said.
The case is part of a broader conflict between technology firms and content creators over whether using copyrighted data to train AI constitutes a legally recognized transformative use.