Five Major Publishers Sue Meta for Unauthorized Use of Copyrighted Works to Train Llama AI Model

Recently, five major publishers including Elsevier, Cengage, Hachette, Macmillan, and McGraw Hill, along with author Scott Turow, filed a class-action lawsuit against Meta Platforms in Manhattan federal court. They accused Meta of pirating millions of works (including textbooks, scientific articles, and novels) without permission to train its AI model Llama.

A Meta spokesperson responded that AI drives transformative innovation, and courts have correctly ruled that using copyrighted materials to train AI can constitute fair use; the company will actively defend against the lawsuit. The publishers are seeking to represent a larger group of copyright owners and claim unspecified financial damages.

Previously, Anthropic paid at least $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit with authors, paying about $3,000 per involved work plus interest, becoming the first large AI company to settle such a case.