Publishers, Turow Sue Meta for AI Copyright Infringement

Five major publishing houses and bestselling author Scott Turow filed a class action lawsuit against Meta Platforms and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, accusing the company of copyright infringement by using millions of pirated books and journal articles to train its Llama artificial intelligence language model.

The plaintiffs, Elsevier, Cengage, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan Publishers and McGraw Hill, along with Turow, allege that Meta reproduced and distributed vast troves of copyrighted material without permission or compensation, despite knowing the actions violated copyright law. The complaint claims Zuckerberg personally authorized and encouraged the infringement, citing the company's "move fast and break things" ethos. It further asserts that Meta obtained data from pirate sites, stripped copyright management information and abandoned potential licensing deals after internal discussions escalated to Zuckerberg.

Authors published by the suing houses include Turow, James Patterson, Donna Tartt, former President Joe Biden and recent Pulitzer Prize winners Yiyun Li and Amanda Vaill. The suit seeks unspecified monetary damages and...