AI copyright lawsuit against Meta by authors allowed to proceed

The ongoing AI-related copyright lawsuit against Meta has received a major boost as a federal judge in the US has decided to let it proceed. The case, Kadrey vs. Meta, involves authors including Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, and Ta-Nehisi Coates who have accused the tech giant of infringing their intellectual property rights. They claim that Meta used their books to train its Llama AI models and then removed copyright information from them to hide this alleged infringement. In response to the allegations, Meta has defended its actions by claiming that its training falls under fair use. The company also argued that the authors do not have the standing to sue. However, US District Judge Vince Chhabria seemed to lean against dismissal of the case last month, despite criticizing what he perceived as over-the-top rhetoric from the authors' legal teams. In his ruling, Judge Chhabria said the claim of copyright infringement is obviously a concrete injury sufficient for standing. He added the authors have adequately alleged that Meta intentionally removed CMI [copyright management information] to conceal copyright infringement. The judge also noted these allegations raise a reasonable, if not particularly strong inference that Meta removed CMI to prevent Llama from outputting it and revealing its training on copyrighted material. However, Judge Chhabria did dismiss the authors' claims under the California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act (CDAFA). He said that they did not allege that Meta accessed their computers or servers — only their data (in the form of their books). This ruling has further defined the scope of the lawsuit against Meta. The lawsuit has also shed light on how Meta approaches copyright. Court filings from the plaintiffs suggest that Mark Zuckerberg gave the Llama team permission to train the models using copyrighted works. Further, other members of the Meta team allegedly discussed using legally questionable content for AI training. These revelations could have major implications for future copyright cases involving AI technology.