A federal judge is allowing an AI-related copyright lawsuit against Meta to proceed, despite dismissing part of the suit.
In Kadrey vs. Meta, authors including Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, and Ta-Nehisi Coates claim that Meta infringed on their intellectual property rights by using their books to train its Llama AI models. The authors also allege that Meta removed copyright information from their books to conceal the infringement.
Meta argues that its training falls under fair use and has requested the case be dismissed due to the authors lacking standing to sue. During a recent court session, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria expressed reluctance towards dismissal but criticized the authors’ legal teams for using exaggerated language.
In a Friday ruling, Chhabria acknowledged that the allegation of copyright infringement presents a concrete injury sufficient for standing and that the authors adequately claimed Meta intentionally removed copyright management information (CMI) to hide the infringement.
Chhabria noted that the authors’ claims under the California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act (CDAFA) were dismissed because they did not demonstrate that Meta accessed their computers or servers, only their data in the form of their books.
The lawsuit has shed light on Meta’s copyright practices, with plaintiffs’ court filings alleging that Mark Zuckerberg authorized the Llama team to use copyrighted works for training and that other Meta team members discussed using potentially illegal content for AI training.
Various AI copyright lawsuits are currently being considered by the courts, including The New York Times’ case against OpenAI.
