Law Professors Support Authors in AI Copyright Battle Against Meta

A group of copyright law professors has thrown their support behind authors suing Meta, alleging that the tech giant trained its Llama AI models on e-books without the authors' consent. The professors filed an amicus brief on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division, challenging Meta's claim of fair use. They argue that Meta's defense is seeking "a breathtaking request for greater legal privileges than courts have ever granted human authors."

The brief asserts that using copyrighted works to train AI models isn't "transformative." It states, "The use of copyrighted works to train generative models is not 'transformative,' because using works for that purpose is not relevantly different from using them to educate human authors, which is a principal original purpose of all of [authors'] works." Furthermore, it argues that this use is commercial in nature, as it enables the creation of competing works in the same market, especially when pursued by a for-profit entity like Meta.

Adding to the chorus of support for the authors, the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers, a global trade association for academic and professional publishers, also filed an amicus brief on the same day.

Following the publication of this article, a Meta spokesperson directed TechCrunch to amicus briefs filed by a smaller group of law professors and the Electronic Frontier Foundation last week, which support Meta's stance in the case.

The Case: Kadrey v. Meta

In the lawsuit, authors such as Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, and Ta-Nehisi Coates claim that Meta infringed on their intellectual property by using their e-books to train AI models. They further allege that Meta stripped the copyright information from these e-books to conceal the infringement. In response, Meta has argued that its use of the e-books falls under fair use and that the case should be dismissed due to the authors' lack of standing to sue.

Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria allowed the case to proceed, though he dismissed a portion of it. In his ruling, Chhabria noted that the copyright infringement claim constitutes "obviously a concrete injury sufficient for standing," and that the authors have "adequately alleged that Meta intentionally removed CMI [copyright management information] to conceal copyright infringement."

Currently, the courts are handling several AI-related copyright lawsuits, including The New York Times' suit against OpenAI.

Updated 3:36 p.m. Pacific: Added references to the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers' amicus brief, as well as amicus briefs filed in support of Meta's position.