In the Kadrey v Meta case, ten law professors from several major American universities have filed a brief in support of the authors who filed suit in 2023 against the use of their works to train Llama. They argue that the « fair use » exception claimed by Meta should not apply. The Kadrey v Meta case is an ongoing lawsuit in the United States, launched by some twenty book authors, and which could become, if the judge grants it, a collective action, or « class action » that would concern all writers or almost all of them. The authors, who filed suit in July 2023, believe that Meta has infringed their copyright by dragging LLaMa, his LLM, along with their works without authorization, and are asking the judge for compensation. The case is still far from being decided, but the parties have already presented their arguments. We summarized Meta’s arguments here, which responds to the complaint by not denying that the works in question were used to train LLaMa, but argues that this use is authorized by the « fair use » exception, which under certain conditions allows works to be used without authorization or remuneration from their authors. This Meta argument, which is also OpenAI’s in other lawsuits, had already taken a hit when it was rejected by the judge in the first AI and copyright case to go to trial: the Thomson Reuters v. Ross case. We wrote about this decision here, which we should…
