SAN FRANCISCO, July 10, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Meta Platforms, Inc. (Meta) has created products that infringe on the rights of book authors under the guise of alleged “artificial intelligence.” The Joseph Saveri Law Firm, LLP—a leading class action firm with offices in California and New York—has filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California on behalf of a class of plaintiffs seeking compensation for damages caused by defendant Meta and an injunction to prevent future harms. The lawsuit alleges direct and vicarious copyright infringement, violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, negligence, unjust enrichment, and various violations of California’s unfair competition laws.
As alleged in the complaint, LLaMA is a set of large language models created and maintained by Meta. These models are trained on vast amounts of text to extract patterns and nuances from its training data. Once a model has ingested a massive amount of text, it emits a convincing facsimile of coherent and understandable text outputs in response to user-generated prompts. The model’s output is reliant on the materials used to train it. As such, the decision regarding what information to use to train a model is a deliberate and important decision.
Plaintiffs and a class of book authors have copyrights to their publications. They have not consented to the use of their copyrighted books as training material for LLaMA. Nonetheless, their copyrighted materials were ingested and used to train LLaMA. Consequently, many of their copyrighted books appear in the dataset that Meta has admitted to using to train LLaMA. If this alleged behavior is allowed to continue, these models will eventually replace the authors whose stolen works power these AI products with whom they are competing. In addition to obtaining redress for this alleged wrongful conduct, this lawsuit—Kadrey v. Meta Platforms, Inc.—seeks to prevent that outcome and ensure these products follow the same rules as any other new technology that involves the use of massive amounts of intellectual property.
“As artificial intelligence continues to change every aspect of the modern world, it’s critical that we recognize and protect the rights of artists such as these authors against unlawful theft and fraud,” said Joseph Saveri, founder of the Joseph Saveri Law Firm, LLP. He continued, “LLaMA is not just an infringement of authors’ rights; whether they aim to or not, these products will eliminate “author” as a viable career path. This case represents a larger fight for preserving ownership rights for all artists and other creators.”
“AI needs to be fair and ethical for everyone,” said lawyer/programmer Matthew Butterick. “But Meta is leveraging the work of thousands of authors with no consent, no credit, and no compensation. It’s an honor to stand up on behalf of fellow book authors and continue the vital conversation about how AI will coexist with human culture and creativity.”
For more information, please see our case page https://www.saverilawfirm.com/generative-ai-litigation and our case website https://llmlitigation.com.
SOURCE Joseph Saveri Law Firm LLP
