Publishers sue Meta platforms over alleged AI training piracy
A group of major publishers has filed a lawsuit against Meta Platforms in Manhattan federal court, accusing the company of using copyrighted books and journal articles without permission to train its artificial intelligence systems.
The publishers bringing the case are Elsevier, Cengage, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan Publishers and McGraw Hill, alongside author Scott Turow.
According to the proposed class-action complaint, Meta allegedly copied millions of books and journal articles without authorisation and used them to train its Llama large language models.
“Meta’s mass-scale infringement isn’t public progress, and AI will never be properly realised if tech companies prioritise pirate sites over scholarship and imagination,” Maria Pallante, president of the Association of American Publishers, said in a statement.
Meta has denied any wrongdoing and issued the following statement: “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. We will fight this lawsuit aggressively.”