Five major publishing houses and bestselling author Scott Turow have initiated legal proceedings against Meta Platforms Inc. and its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, accusing them of deliberately infringing copyright by utilising millions of protected literary works to train the company's artificial intelligence language model, Llama.
Lawsuit Alleges Deliberate Infringement
The class action complaint, lodged on Tuesday in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, contends that Meta and Zuckerberg contravened copyright law on a massive scale. The plaintiffs assert that the technology conglomerate reproduced and distributed countless copyrighted books and journal articles without obtaining necessary permissions or offering compensation to authors and publishers.
According to the legal filing, Zuckerberg 'personally authorised and actively encouraged' the alleged infringement, with the company adhering to its well-known motto 'move fast and break things'. The publishers involved in the case are Elsevier, Cengage, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan, and McGraw Hill.
Prominent Authors Among Claimants
The lawsuit encompasses works by a range of distinguished writers, including James Patterson, Donna Tartt, former President Joe Biden, and two of the Pulitzer Prize winners announced earlier this week, Yiyun Li and Amanda Vaill. The plaintiffs argue that Meta's actions have caused substantial harm to the publishing industry and the creative community.
Meta's Response
In a statement released on Monday, Meta signalled its intention to vigorously defend against the allegations. The company argued that training AI on copyrighted material can constitute fair use, a position that has been upheld by courts in previous cases. '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 statement said.
Broader Context of AI and Copyright Disputes
This legal action is the latest in a series of disputes between the literary community and developers of artificial intelligence. Over the past few years, numerous authors have pursued legal remedies over the unauthorised use of their works. In a notable settlement in 2025, Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to resolve a class action suit initiated by thriller novelist Andrea Bartz and nonfiction writers Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson. A final approval hearing for that settlement is scheduled for next week.
