Mark Zuckerberg's Meta Beats Lawsuit Over AI Training On Books, Judge Finds 'No Meaningful Evidence On Market Dilution'

On Wednesday, Meta Platforms Inc. META scored a legal victory as a federal judge ruled that the company’s use of copyrighted books to train its AI models is protected under the fair use doctrine.

What Happened: A lawsuit filed by 13 authors, including Sarah Silverman, claimed Meta illegally used their copyrighted works to train AI models.

However, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria sided with Meta, granting summary judgment and stating that the company's actions fell under fair use, reported TechCrunch.

See Also: Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Dangled ‘$100 Million Signing Bonuses’ To OpenAI Team Members, Says Sam Altman: Happy ‘None’ Of Our Best People Took Them

“The plaintiffs presented no meaningful evidence on market dilution at all,” Judge Chhabria said. He went on to say that while the case was narrowly focused, AI model training can be deemed transformative, meaning Meta's models didn't simply replicate the authors' works.

Judge Chhabria added that this decision doesn't make all AI model training legal, but pointed out that the plaintiffs failed to make sufficient arguments about market harm.

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Why It’s Important: The decision follows a similar ruling in favor of Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN backed Anthropic, another AI company. 

However, multiple other lawsuits are ongoing against tech firms accused of using different types of copyrighted content for AI training.

This includes The New York Times's case against OpenAI and Microsoft Corporation MSFT over the use of its news articles, while Walt Disney Co. DIS and Comcast Corp's CMCSA Universal Studios have taken legal action against Midjourney for allegedly training AI models on movies and television content.

Price Action: Meta shares declined by 0.49% in Wednesday's regular trading and edged up by 0.017% in after-hours trading, as per Benzinga Pro.

Benzinga's Edge Stock Rankings show a steady upward trajectory for META over short, medium and long-term periods. Additional performance insights can be found here.

Photo Courtesy: Skorzewiak on Shutterstock.com

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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.