Meta says copying books was 'fair use' in authors' AI lawsuit

March 25 (Reuters) - Meta Platforms (META.O) has asked a U.S. court to rule that it did not violate copyright law when it used books by writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, comedian Sarah Silverman and others to train its artificial intelligence system.

Meta told a federal judge in San Francisco on Monday that it made "fair use" of the books in developing its large language model Llama, arguing that the authors' lawsuit should be thrown out.

Fair use could be the deciding legal question in high-stakes copyright cases brought by authors, artists, news outlets and others against major technology companies over AI training.

Attorneys for the authors did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. A Meta spokesperson said that fair use is "vital" to its "transformational GenAI open source LLMs that are powering incredible innovation, productivity, and creativity."

The authors sued Meta in 2023, arguing that it used pirated versions of their books to train Llama without their permission. Meta responded on Monday that its AI training was protected by the legal doctrine of fair use, which allows for the unauthorized use of copyrighted material under certain circumstances.

Meta argued that its use was transformative, training Llama to "serve as a personal tutor on nearly any subject, assist with creative ideation, and help users to generate business reports, translate conversations, analyze data, write code, and compose poems or letters to friends."

"What it does not do is replicate Plaintiffs books or substitute for reading them," Meta said.
The authors asked the court, opens new tab earlier this month to reject Meta's fair use defense.

"Meta wanted books for their expressive content — the very subject matter copyright law protects," the authors said. "But instead of paying rightsholders, Meta systematically took and fed entire copies of pirated works into its LLMs to extract that expressive content without having to pay."

The case is Kadrey v. Meta Platforms Inc, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 3:23-cv-03417.