US judge questions Meta's claim that training AI on copyrighted books is fair use

A federal judge in San Francisco is questioning whether Meta can use copyrighted books to train its AI models without getting permission from authors. The case centers on Meta's Llama model, which was trained on works including those by Sarah Silverman. Meta argues its use of the material falls under "fair use," while the plaintiffs say it amounts to copyright infringement. During a recent hearing, Judge Vince Chhabria acknowledged that using copyrighted data for AI could be considered transformative, but said that doesn't necessarily make it fair. He pointed out that the resulting technology could undermine the entire market for original works.

You have companies using copyright-protected material to create a product that is capable of producing an infinite number of competing products. You are dramatically changing, you might even say obliterating, the market for that person's work, and you're saying that you don't even have to pay a license to that person.