Meta’s Llama AI in hot water: Alleged copyright theft leads to class action lawsuit, accused of pirating 82TB of books for AI training

Meta’s LLaMA AI is in the spotlight after being hit with a class action lawsuit accusing the company of illegally using pirated books to train its AI models, as per a report.

According to court records shared by vx-underground, Meta allegedly downloaded 81.7TB of data from shadow libraries like Anna’s Archive, Z-Library, and LibGen through torrents to feed its AI.

According to Tom's Hardware report, internal messages reveal that even some of Meta’s own employees raised concerns over using pirated materials. One senior AI researcher warned as early as October 2022 about crossing ethical lines, stating, “I don’t think we should use pirated material.” Another employee agreed, saying that platforms like SciHub and LibGen were essentially pirating content.


Despite these concerns, in January 2023, Meta pushed ahead. Mark Zuckerberg himself was involved in a meeting urging the team to “move this stuff forward.” As per the report, an employee flagged Meta’s IP addresses being used to access pirated content, even joking that “torrenting from a corporate laptop doesn’t feel right.”

What makes the case more concerning is evidence that Meta took steps to hide its involvement by avoiding direct links between its corporate infrastructure and the illegal downloading activity, reported Tom's Hardware. This is seen as an attempt to bypass copyright laws, according to the lawsuit.

Meta isn't the only tech company facing backlash for how it trains AI. OpenAI has been sued by novelists for allegedly using their books without permission, and Nvidia has faced legal action for using thousands of books and videos to train its models.

The lawsuit is ongoing, and even if Meta loses, the company could appeal, meaning the final ruling might take months or even years to settle.

FAQs

How did Meta allegedly obtain the pirated content?
Meta is accused of using torrents to download large volumes of books, including copyrighted material, to train its AI. Court documents show that the company took steps to avoid direct links to its infrastructure to keep these actions under the radar.

Has this happened before with other AI companies?
Yes, Meta isn't the only company to face such accusations. OpenAI has been sued by authors for using their books to train its language models, and Nvidia was also sued for scraping books and videos for its own AI model training.