Five Publishers and Scott Turow Sue Meta and Mark Zuckerberg
The New York Times • • business
Key Points:
- Five major publishers and novelist Scott Turow have filed a class-action copyright infringement lawsuit against Meta and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, alleging unauthorized use of copyrighted works to train Meta's AI program Llama.
- The lawsuit claims Meta's engineers used pirated books and journal articles from sites like Anna’s Archive, LibGen, and Sci-Hub to train Llama, with Zuckerberg personally authorizing the infringement.
- Plaintiffs argue that Meta's AI threatens writers' and publishers' livelihoods by generating copycat books and detailed summaries that reduce the need to purchase original works.
- The complaint highlights the flooding of AI-generated books on Amazon, displacing human-authored content, and names authors such as V.E. Schwab, N.K. Jemisin, Lemony Snicket, and Scott Turow whose works were allegedly used.
- Meta denies wrongdoing, stating that training AI on copyrighted material can qualify as fair use and pledges to fight the lawsuit aggressively.
