Major publishers including Elsevier, Cengage, Hachette, Macmillan, and McGraw Hill have filed a class-action lawsuit against Meta Platforms, alleging that the tech giant used their copyrighted books and journal articles without permission to train its artificial intelligence model Llama. The suit was filed in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday.
Key Takeaways
Major publishers and author Scott Turow have sued Meta for allegedly using copyrighted works to train its AI models without permission. The lawsuit, filed in New York federal court, claims Meta scraped millions of books and articles from various sources, including pirate sites. According to the plaintiffs, Llama's output reproduces original content and mimics authors' styles.
- Publishers Elsevier, Cengage, Hachette, Macmillan, McGraw Hill sue Meta for copyright infringement
- Author Scott Turow joins lawsuit alleging unauthorized use of copyrighted works to train AI models
- Plaintiffs claim Llama reproduces original content and mimics authors' writing styles
- Meta denies wrongdoing, plans to fight the lawsuit aggressively
The plaintiffs, which also include bestselling author Scott Turow, claim Meta scraped millions of works from across the internet—including from 'notorious pirate sites'—and used them to train Llama's large language models without obtaining proper licenses. The lawsuit alleges that Meta removed copyright management information to conceal its use of stolen materials.
According to the complaint, Llama generates text outputs that reproduce versions of original works and in some cases recreate verbatim copies. The AI tool also mirrors certain authors' personal styles in its responses. 'Meta’s mass-scale infringement isn’t public progress,' said Maria Pallante, president of the Association of American Publishers.
A Meta spokesperson told CBS News that the company plans to fight the lawsuit aggressively, stating: 'AI is powering transformative innovations... and courts have rightly found that training AI on copyrighted material can qualify as fair use.' The case opens a new front in the ongoing copyright battle between creators and tech companies over AI training.
This lawsuit follows a similar case where Anthropic agreed to settle with hundreds of thousands of authors for $1.5 billion, marking the largest payout for copyright infringement in history. The publishers are seeking unspecified monetary damages and permission to represent a larger class of copyright owners.
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