A group of publishers filed a lawsuit against Meta this evening accusing the company of using their books without permission to train AI models.
The suit claims Meta violated copyright laws in the process.
This is the latest in a series of legal challenges against big tech over AI training data.
The publishers are seeking damages and changes to Meta’s practices.
The case could have broad implications for the industry. Publishers going after Meta on AI training data is a significant legal fight.
This is one of many cases testing how far companies can go with copyrighted material.
The outcome could reshape how AI models are built going forward.
Major publishers sued Meta for pirating millions of books to train its AI
“Five major publishers and best-selling novelist Scott Turow filed a class-action copyright infringement lawsuit against Meta $META -0.89% and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday, alleging the company pirated millions of books and journal articles to train its Llama artificial intelligence models.
Named as plaintiffs in the complaint are publishers Hachette, Macmillan, McGraw Hill, Elsevier, and Cengage, with the case brought before a federal court in Manhattan. According to the suit, the company’s engineers obtained pirated books and journal articles by routing through Anna’s Archive — a search engine that indexes piracy repositories such as LibGen and Sci-Hub — to acquire unlicensed copies for use in training. The complaint further accuses Zuckerberg of direct involvement, alleging he “personally authorized and actively encouraged the infringement,” The New York Times reported.”
This is the messiest part of the suit. Publishers aren’t just mad about web scraping; they’re alleging Meta intentionally used known pirate repositories (Anna’s Archive) to ingest millions of copyrighted books. This makes the “Fair Use” defense much harder to argue if the source material was illegally obtained.
By naming Zuckerberg and claiming he personally greenlit the infringement, the publishers are trying to pierce the corporate veil. It’s an aggressive move designed to force a high-dollar settlement rather than a decade-long trial.