Judge Sides With Meta in Authors’ AI Copyright Case—But Leaves Door Open
This week, a federal judge handed Meta a win in a high-profile lawsuit over AI training—though the ruling wasn’t exactly the green light tech companies might’ve hoped for.
U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria dismissed claims from 13 authors, including Sarah Silverman and Pulitzer winners Junot Díaz and Andrew Sean Greer, who argued Meta’s use of their books to train AI models like Llama violated copyright law. The problem? Their case, Chhabria said, didn’t show concrete harm. Their arguments “barely give this issue lip service,” he wrote.
But here’s the catch: the judge made it clear this wasn’t a blanket approval of Meta’s methods. “This ruling does not stand for the proposition that Meta’s use of copyrighted materials is lawful,” Chhabria stressed. It just means these plaintiffs didn’t build a strong enough case.
Pirated Books and Corporate Hesitation
The lawsuit, filed last year, accused Meta and OpenAI of scraping pirated copies of books—including some from notorious shadow libraries—to train their AI systems without permission. Internal messages revealed in court showed Meta’s own engineers were uneasy. One admitted torrenting books on a work laptop “doesn’t feel right.” Yet they did it anyway, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally signing off.
Chhabria didn’t ignore the bigger picture. He acknowledged AI could “flood the market” with cheap, AI-generated books, songs, and art, undermining the value of human-created work. That’s a real concern, he said—but sympathy isn’t enough. “Courts can’t decide cases based on general understandings,” he noted.
Two Wins for AI—With Caveats
This marks the second AI-related fair use victory in days. Earlier this week, Anthropic won a similar case, though Judge William Alsup slammed the company for hoarding pirated books.
So where does this leave creators? Some experts argue waiting for regulations is a dead end. “By the time policymakers catch up, AI will have evolved again,” said Hitesh Bhardwaj of Capx AI. He thinks the answer lies in market solutions—licensing platforms where authors control how their work is used.
Kunal Anand, who runs an AI chatbot service, called the ruling a “reminder” that ethical AI needs clearer rules. “It’s about balancing progress with rights,” he said.
For now, the decision only applies to these 13 authors. But it’s another sign courts aren’t ready to slam the brakes on AI training—even if they’re not fully endorsing it either.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.
