A U.S. judge sided with Meta Platforms Inc. today in an AI copyright lawsuit brought by 13 authors who claimed the social media firm had illegally trained its AI systems on their work without permission.

This is the second major AI copyright case this week, with both decisions in favor of the AI companies. In the first, which was brought against Anthropic PBC, the judge ruled that training AI systems on written works amounted to “fair use” under U.S. copyright law.

Today’s case, which was brought by the comedian Sarah Silverman and other notable authors, claimed that Meta had trained its large language models on their copyrighted works. The authors said their books were available through various online libraries, which resulted in the firm plagiarizing their content. They claimed that Meta’s practices hurt the book market.

Federal Judge Vince Chhabria disagreed, writing in his summary judgment that it “is generally illegal to copy protected works without permission,” but in this case, the plaintiffs, he said, hadn’t provided a compelling argument that Meta’s practices had harmed the book market.

“On this record, Meta has defeated the plaintiffs’ half-hearted argument that its copying causes or threatens significant market harm,” he said. “That conclusion may be in significant tension with reality.”

Still, Chhabria contended that this doesn’t mean that such practices are lawful all the time.

“This is not a class action, so the ruling only affects the rights of these thirteen authors — not the countless others whose works Meta used to train its models,” he wrote. “And, as should now be clear, this ruling does not stand for the proposition that Meta’s use of copyrighted materials to train its language models is lawful.”

He also dismissed Meta’s contention that not allowing firms to train their AI models on copyrighted works would put a stop to the development of LLMs, which he said was “nonsense.”

“We appreciate today’s decision from the Court,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement. “Open-source AI models are powering transformative innovations, productivity, and creativity for individuals and companies, and fair use of copyright material is a vital legal framework for building this transformative technology.”

Photo: Unsplash