Meta has prevailed in a high-profile federal lawsuit claiming that it allegedly trained its powerful AI model, Llama, on a vast trove of copyrighted books — including President Donald Trump's own "The Art of the Deal." The lawsuit, filed two years ago by authors Richard Kadrey and Christopher Golden and comedian Sarah Silverman, claims the tech giant behind Facebook and Instagram used more than 190,000 copyrighted books without authorization or compensation. Among the titles reportedly used to train Meta's ...

Core Viewpoint - AI companies, particularly Meta and Anthropic, have achieved significant legal victories regarding the use of copyrighted materials for AI training, but these rulings do not establish a blanket legality for such practices in the future [1][2][8]. Group 1: Legal Rulings - Meta won a motion for partial summary judgment in a case involving 13 authors who claimed copyright infringement due to the use of their books for training Llama AI models [1]. - Judge Vince Chhabria emphasized that the ruling does not imply that Meta's use of copyrighted materials is lawful, but rather that the plaintiffs failed to present compelling arguments [2]. - The rulings are significant as they are among the first to provide substantive legal analyses on the fair use doctrine in the context of AI [8]. Group 2: Fair Use Doctrine - The core issue revolves around whether AI companies' use of protected content qualifies as fair use, which allows for certain uses of copyrighted work without permission [2]. - The fair use evaluation considers four key factors, with Meta's ruling focusing on the impact of AI on the existing publishing market [2][5]. - Judge Chhabria noted that while AI-generated works could diminish the market for human-created books, the plaintiffs did not provide sufficient evidence of harm [6]. Group 3: Industry Implications - The victories for AI companies may reduce the need for costly licensing agreements with content creators, which has raised concerns among authors [3]. - A group of authors has publicly urged publishers to take a stronger stance against AI, highlighting the lack of permission and compensation for the use of their works [4]. - The rulings may influence future cases, as they set precedents that judges can reference in similar copyright disputes involving AI [9][10].

It's a fascinating read. And you go into the intricacies of how entropic, first of all, did it. And they did it perhaps with a mixture of pirated book piece.But then they actually started buying physical books, taking out the spine and copying them into the computer. Yes. So they went out and they they acquired pirated copies of more than 7 million books to try in their models.After a short while, they thought, well, maybe there's a better way to do this. And they bought the physical used copies from distri ...

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has won the backing of a judge in a copyright lawsuit brought by a group of authors, in the second legal victory for the US artificial intelligence industry this week.The writers, who included Sarah Silverman and Ta-Nehisi Coates, had argued that the Facebook owner had breached copyright law by using their books without permission to train its AI system.The ruling follows a decision on Monday that Anthropic, another major player in the AI field, had not infringed authors’ copyright.Th ...

Core Viewpoint - A federal judge ruled in favor of Meta in a lawsuit regarding the training of AI models on copyrighted works, determining that such use falls under the "fair use" doctrine of copyright law [2][3]. Group 1: Legal Rulings - Judge Vince Chhabria issued a summary judgment, allowing Meta to avoid a jury trial, and concluded that the training of AI models on copyrighted books was legal under fair use [2]. - The ruling is part of a broader trend favoring the tech industry, as seen in a similar case involving Anthropic, although both rulings are limited in scope [3]. - Judge Chhabria emphasized that this decision does not imply that all AI training on copyrighted materials is lawful, but rather that the plaintiffs failed to present adequate arguments and evidence [4][5]. Group 2: Market Impact and Evidence - The judge noted that the plaintiffs did not provide meaningful evidence to demonstrate that Meta's actions harmed the market for the authors' works, which is crucial in copyright cases [8]. - The ruling highlighted that the transformative nature of Meta's AI models, which do not simply reproduce the authors' books, played a significant role in the decision [5]. Group 3: Industry Context - The outcomes of the cases involving Meta and Anthropic are part of ongoing legal battles faced by technology companies regarding the use of copyrighted materials for AI training, with other lawsuits pending against companies like OpenAI and Midjourney [9]. - Judge Chhabria pointed out that fair use defenses are highly case-specific, suggesting that different industries may have varying strengths in their fair use arguments [10].

Google has reported the results of an experiment it ran which removed news from search results for 1% of users for 2.5 months in eight* markets in Europe — claiming the results show that news is essentially worthless to Google’s ad business. The search giant conducted the test because European copyright law requires it to pay news publishers for reusing snippets of their content. But how much is displaying news worth? Google argues that publishers “vastly overestimate” the value of their journalism to its b ...