Several Major Publishers Sue Meta Over Copyright Infringement in AI Training
Elsevier, Cengage, Hachette, Macmillan, and McGraw-Hill sued Meta Platforms on Tuesday, accusing the tech giant of misusing their books and journal articles to train its Llama AI model. These publishers, along with author Scott Turow, allege in a proposed class-action lawsuit that Meta pirated millions of their works and used them without permission to train its large language model to respond to human prompts.
Maria Pallante, President of the Association of American Publishers, stated in a statement: “Meta’s massive infringement is not public progress, and AI will never reach its full potential if tech companies place piracy above academic research and imagination.”
Publishers accuse Meta of using a variety of works – from textbooks and scientific papers to novels, including N.K. Jemisin’s “The Fifth Season” and Peter Brown’s “The Wild Robot” – to train its AI. They are asking the court to approve representing a broader group of copyright holders and are seeking unspecified economic damages.
The case opens a new front in the ongoing copyright battle between creators and tech companies over AI training, with dozens of authors, news organizations, visual artists, and other plaintiffs already suing Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic over infringement issues.
At the heart of all pending cases is likely the question of whether AI systems constitute fair use by creating new, transformative content through the use of copyrighted material. Last year, the first two judges to rule on the matter issued drastically different rulings.
Anthropic, backed by Amazon and Google, was the first major AI company to reach a settlement in one of the cases, agreeing last year to pay a group of authors $1.5 billion to resolve a class-action lawsuit. The company could face billions of dollars in additional damages if it loses.