- Meta just won a major AI copyright case — thanks to a legal misstep by the other side.
- A group of authors had sued Meta, saying their copyrighted books were used to train its AI models.
- The judge said the plaintiffs' lawyers failed to make the right arguments.
Meta just scored a major legal win in the battle over how AI models are trained — but not because the court cleared its actions.
Instead, the judge said the lawyers for the other side botched the case.
A California federal judge on Wednesday dismissed most of a lawsuit brought by a group of authors who accused Meta of using their copyrighted books to train its AI models.
The ruling said Meta had used LibGen, a shadow library that hosts millions of pirated books, academic articles, and comics, to train its large language models, including Llama.
Companies like Meta require vast amounts of input to develop their large language models, so they've tapped sources from social media posts to videos to books. Authors, artists, publishers, and other groups contend that the use of their work for training amounts to theft.
US District Judge Vince Chhabria said he ruled for Meta not because its use of copyrighted materials is lawful, but because the plaintiffs bungled the argument.
"This ruling does not stand for the proposition that Meta's use of copyrighted materials to train its language models is lawful," Chhabria said. "It stands only for the proposition that these plaintiffs made the wrong arguments and failed to develop a record in support of the right one."
Chhabria said that one "potentially winning argument" — that AI tools could harm the market for human-created content — was barely mentioned. The lawyers representing the authors presented no evidence about how Meta's models could generate outputs that would "dilute the market" for their works, he said.
"The plaintiffs barely give this issue lip service," Chhabria wrote, warning that generative AI could "flood the market with endless amounts of images, songs, articles, books, and more."
He said these AI-generated contents could be produced with "a tiny fraction of the time and creativity" it takes a human. AI could "dramatically undermine the incentive for human beings to create things the old-fashioned way."
A representative for Boies Schiller Flexner said in a statement that the firm's attorneys "respectfully disagree" with the judge's ruling in favor of Meta. The spokesperson did not respond to Business Insider's question about how Chhabria characterized the arguments.
A number of other law firms also represented the plaintiffs.
Meta did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Second lawsuit in favour of tech groups
Chhabria's ruling follows a federal judge's ruling on Monday in favor of AI startup Anthropic in a similar case.
Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California ruled that Anthropic's use of millions of copyrighted books to train its AI models was "exceedingly transformative" and qualified as fair use, a legal doctrine that allows certain uses of copyrighted works without the copyright owner's permission.
"Like any reader aspiring to be a writer, Anthropic's LLMs trained upon works not to race ahead and replicate or supplant them — but to turn a hard corner and create something different," he wrote.
Meta's and Anthropic's rulings come amid a wave of lawsuits from artists, filmmakers, authors, and news outlets against major AI players like OpenAI.
While creators say training AI models on their copyrighted work without permission infringes on their rights, AI execs argue they haven't violated copyright laws because the training falls under fair use.
Earlier this month, Disney sued AI image generator Midjourney, saying the tech company ripped off famous characters in properties ranging from "Star Wars" to "The Simpsons."
