The lawsuit says Mark Zuckerberg approved Meta’s use of pirated materials to train Llama AI

Meta used pirated materials to train its Llama AI models — with the blessing of company CEO Mark Zuckerberg — according to an ongoing copyright lawsuit against the company. like TechCrunch reports, The plaintiffs in Qadri v. Meta issue Submitted Court documents that talk about the company Use LibGen A dataset for AI training.

LibGen is generally described as a “shadow library” that provides file-sharing access to academic books, journals, images, and other materials of general interest. A lawyer for the plaintiffs, who include writers Sarah Silverman and Ta-Nehisi Coates, accused Zuckerberg of agreeing to use LibGen for training despite concerns raised by company executives and employees who described it as “a data set (they) knew was hacked.” “

The complaint also said the company removed copyright information from LibGen materials, before sending them to Llama. Meta appears to have admitted in a document submitted to the court that it had “removed all copyright paragraphs from the beginning and end” of scientific journal articles. One of its engineers even set up a script to automatically delete copyright information. The lawyer argued that Meta did so to hide its copyright infringement activities from the public. Additionally, the attorney stated, Meta admitted to downloading LibGen material via torrent, even though its engineers felt uneasy about sharing it “from a corporate laptop (owned by Meta).”

Silverman, along with other writers, Filed a lawsuit against Meta and OpenAI for copyright infringement in 2023. They accused the companies of using pirated material from shadow libraries to train their AI models. The court previously dismissed some of their claims, but the plaintiffs said their amended complaint supports their claims and addresses the court’s previous reasons for dismissal.