Meta Sued by Publishers and Authors for Copyright Infringement

Meta and Mark Zuckerberg have been named in a class action lawsuit filed by publishers and novelist Scott Turow. The plaintiffs allege that Meta scraped millions of copyrighted works from the internet without permission to train its Llama models.

According to the lawsuit, Meta gathered materials from sources including 'notorious pirate sites,' and stripped copyright management information to conceal the fact that the training had taken place. The plaintiffs also claim that Llama reproduces content from novels, academic journals, and textbooks verbatim, or mimics the writing style of specific authors, thereby infringing on copyright holders' income.

The lawsuit specifically names Zuckerberg as personally liable, alleging that he bypassed licensing procedures and directly authorized and encouraged the AI development.

Meta has stated it will vigorously defend against the lawsuit, maintaining that using copyrighted material for AI training constitutes Fair Use.