Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg Allegedly Permitted Llama AI Models’ Training on Copyrighted Materials

Meta is facing a copyright lawsuit over allegedly using copyrighted works to train its artificial intelligence (AI) models. The lawsuit was filed by multiple complainants that also include several bestselling authors. The primary allegation against the tech giant is that it used pirated e-books and articles to train the older versions of its Llama AI models, violating copyright laws. Additionally, the filings also accuse company CEO Mark Zuckerberg of allowing its Llama AI team to torrent a sketchy link aggregator to access the copyrighted materials.

The information comes from two separate documents filed with the US District Court for the Northern District of California on Wednesday. The documents, from complainants such as authors Sarah Silverman and Ta-Nehisi Coates, highlight Meta’s testimony given in late 2024 where it was discovered that Zuckerberg permitted the usage of a dataset called LibGen to train its Llama AI models.

Notably, LibGen (short for Library Genesis) is a file-sharing platform that offers free access to academic and general-interest content. Many consider it a pirate library as it gives access to copyrighted works that are otherwise either available behind a paywall or are not digitised at all. The platform has faced several lawsuits and has been ordered to shut down in the past.

The filings claim that Meta used the LibGen dataset while having full knowledge that it had pirated content and broke copyright laws. The document also cited a memo to Meta’s AI decision-makers that mentions after “escalation to MZ,” Meta’s AI team “has been approved to use LibGen”. Here, MZ is a shorthand for the Meta CEO’s name.

Additionally, the memo also mentioned that the executives were alerted to the fact that public knowledge about using “a dataset we know to be pirated such as LibGen” could undermine its negotiating position with regulators. The social media giant was also accused of stripping copyright information from the dataset’s text and metadata to conceal its infringement.

As per the filings, Nikolay Bashlykov, a research engineer working in Meta’s AI division allegedly removed copyright information from the LibGen dataset. To further hide the evidence of using the alleged dataset “Meta’s programmers included “supervised samples” of data when fine-tuning Llama to ensure Llama’s output would include less incriminating answers when answering prompts regarding the source of Meta’s AI training data,” stated the document.

Further, the complainants also alleged that Meta was involved in another kind of copyright infringement just by accessing LibGen. The filings claimed that the tech giant torrented the LibGen dataset. The process of using Torrent includes both downloading as well as uploading (also known as seeding) the content. The process of uploading can be considered distribution of copyright materials and constitute a violation, claimed the filings.

“Had Meta bought Plaintiffs’ works in a bookstore or borrowed them from a library and trained its Llama models on them without a license, it would have committed copyright infringement. Meta’s decision to bypass lawful methods of acquiring books and become a knowing participant in an illegal torrenting network establishes a CDAFA [California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act] violation and serves as proof of copyright infringement,” the filings stated.

Currently, the copyright lawsuit is open and a ruling is pending. Meta is yet to make its arguments, which are likely to be based on fair usage. The court will have to decide whether the AI model’s generative capabilities can be considered transformative enough to validate that argument or not.