Meta Platforms, owned by Mark Zuckerberg, is urging a U.S. court to dismiss a lawsuit that accuses the company of infringing copyright laws by using books from renowned authors to train its artificial intelligence models. The tech giant contends that its actions fall under the legal doctrine of "fair use," which permits limited use of copyrighted content without explicit authorization.

This lawsuit, brought forward by authors including Ta-Nehisi Coates and Sarah Silverman, alleges that Meta utilized unauthorized copies of their works to develop its AI systems. According to a Reuters report, Meta submitted its legal request to a federal judge in San Francisco, arguing that AI training constitutes fair use, a provision that supports education, research, and transformative applications of copyrighted materials.

Meta asserts that its large language model, Llama, does not serve as a substitute for the original books but rather facilitates various tasks such as business report writing, language translation, and data analysis. Company representatives emphasize that fair use is fundamental to their open-source AI initiatives, which they believe foster innovation and creativity. They further argue that Llama does not replicate entire books but instead transforms information in ways that add value to users rather than diminish the work of original authors.

However, the authors involved in the lawsuit see the matter differently. They claim Meta deliberately acquired their books through unauthorised sources, using them without permission or compensation. Earlier this month, the plaintiffs urged the judge to reject Meta's fair use defense, stating that the company copied their entire works to leverage their value without providing due payment to the creators.

This legal dispute is part of a larger debate surrounding AI training and copyright compliance. Other major tech firms, including OpenAI and Google, have also encountered similar legal challenges from writers, artists, and media organizations questioning whether existing copyright laws are being upheld in the development of artificial intelligence systems.