Meta Beats Copyright Suit from Authors over AI Training on Books

Meta Platforms Inc. escaped a first-of-its-kind copyright lawsuit from a group of authors who alleged the tech giant hoovered up millions of copyrighted books without permission to train its generative AI model called Llama.

San Francisco federal Judge Vince Chhabria ruled Wednesday that Meta’s decision to use the books for training is protected under copyright law’s fair use defense, but he cautioned that his opinion is more a reflection on the authors’ failure to litigate the case effectively.

“This ruling does not stand for the proposition that Meta’s use of copyrighted materials to train its language models is lawful,” Chhabria ...