By Katherine Hamilton
A group of publishers have filed a class action lawsuit against Meta Platforms, alleging the tech conglomerate illegally used their copyrighted works to source and train its AI platform.
Publishers including Cengage Learning, Hachette, Macmillan, McGraw and Scott Turow are demanding a jury trial to review their claims of copyright infringement.
They said Meta accessed millions of books and journal articles from pirating sites, which the company then allegedly used to train its AI platform Llama.
The publishers also claimed Meta stripped copyright-management information from the works to conceal its training sources and facilitate the unauthorized use.
The lawsuit also names Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, who the publishers claimed allegedly personally authorized and actively encouraged the copyright infringement.
The "defendants engaged in one of the most massive infringements of copyrighted materials in history," the publishers said in the suit.
A Meta spokesperson said the company plans to fight the suit aggressively.
"AI is powering transformative innovations, productivity and creativity for individuals and companies, and courts have rightly found that training AI on copyrighted material can qualify as fair use," the spokesperson said.
Write to Katherine Hamilton at katherine.hamilton@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
05-05-26 1149ET
