Revealed Court Filings: Meta Employees Considered Using Copyrighted Material for AI Training
Court documents recently revealed that Meta employees have been discussing the use of copyrighted works obtained through potentially questionable means for training the company’s AI models. Unsealed court filings from the case Kadrey v. Meta illustrate that Meta believes their use of copyrighted material is covered under "fair use," a claim disputed by the plaintiffs, which includes notable authors like Sarah Silverman and Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Earlier filings indicated that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sanctioned the training of AI models using copyrighted content. Furthermore, it was noted that Meta paused negotiations for licensing data from book publishers. The newly revealed documents showcase exchanges among Meta staff, emphasizing plans to utilize copyrighted content for AI training despite the risks involved.
In a conversation dated February 2023, a Meta research engineer suggested a strategy of acquiring e-books at retail prices to build a training dataset while bypassing formal licensing processes. He asserted that this approach could reduce time spent negotiating with publishers, even implying that many startups might already be using unauthorized materials.
Another discussion addressed potentially using Libgen, a notorious aggregator of copyrighted works. Although the legal risks were outlined, some Meta decision-makers expressed concern that not leveraging such resources could hamper their competitiveness in the AI sector. They proposed various measures to mitigate legal repercussions, such as avoiding public acknowledgment of any potential use of Libgen datasets.
The filings also hinted at the possibility that Meta’s AI team had scraped data from Reddit for model training, hinting at controversial practices given Reddit’s recent decision to start charging for access to its API for such purposes.
Meta executives are appearing increasingly willing to override previous restrictions regarding their training datasets, including a concerning shift in strategy that would allow for more aggressive data acquisition tactics, even if they risk legal battles.
Given the mounting legal pressures and responses from authors contesting their methods, Meta has reinforced its legal team with high-profile litigators as it prepares to navigate this complex legal landscape.
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