Five book publishers and author Scott Turow sue Meta over alleged copyright infringement in Llama AI training

Macmillan, McGraw Hill, Elsevier, Hachette, Cengage, and author Scott Turow filed a class action lawsuit accusing Meta of copying books and journal articles without permission to train Llama AI models, including material sourced from pirate sites such as LibGen, Anna's Archive, Sci-Hub, and Sci-Mag.

The lawsuit claims Llama outputs verbatim and near-verbatim substitutes of copyrighted material—for example, when given two brief sentences from Cengage's Calculus: Early Transcendentals textbook by James Stewart, the model reproduces word-for-word the continuation of the section.

The plaintiffs are seeking damages and court orders requiring Meta to block unlawful activities and disclose a list of copyrighted works used to train Llama. Meta spokesperson Dave Arnold stated the company "will fight this lawsuit aggressively" and that courts have found training AI on copyrighted material can qualify as fair use.