By Meta Platforms, Inc., the parent company of Facebook, is currently embroiled in a significant legal battle over allegations of copyright infringement. The company is accused of illegally downloading approximately 81.7 terabytes of pirated books from shadow libraries such as Z-Library and LibGen to train its AI models, including LLaMA. Internal communications from Meta reveal that some employees expressed ethical concerns about using pirated materials. In October 2022, a senior AI researcher stated, “I don’t think we should use pirated material. I really need to draw a line here.” Despite these concerns, the company allegedly proceeded with downloading the data.
By January 2023, CEO Mark Zuckerberg was reportedly involved in discussions about advancing these initiatives, emphasizing the need to “move this stuff forward.” Further evidence suggests that Meta took deliberate steps to conceal its activities. Employees reportedly modified settings to minimize the seeding of pirated content and avoided using company infrastructure for these operations to prevent tracing back to Meta.
One employee noted, “Torrenting from a corporate laptop doesn’t feel right,” highlighting internal awareness of the potential legal implications. This case is part of a broader pattern of legal challenges faced by tech companies regarding the use of copyrighted materials in AI training. Authors such as Sarah Silverman and Richard Kadrey have filed lawsuits against Meta, alleging unauthorized use of their works. The outcomes of these cases could have significant implications for the tech industry, particularly concerning the ethical and legal standards for using copyrighted materials in AI development.
