Novelist Christopher Farnsworth has initiated a proposed class-action copyright lawsuit against Meta Platforms (META.O), alleging that the technology company has improperly utilized his works, among with others, to train its Llama artificial intelligence large language model.
Farnsworth asserted in the complaint filed on Tuesday that Meta provided Llama, the technology behind its AI chatbots, with thousands of pirated books to train its response to human queries.
Other authors, including as Ta-Nehisi Coates, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, and comic Sarah Silverman, have filed analogous class-action lawsuits against Meta in the same court about its purported utilization of their novels for AI training.
Farnsworth’s case, initiated by the prominent class action plaintiffs’ law firm Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, follows a federal judge’s admonition of the lead attorney in the prior case and permits distinguished litigator David Boies and additional attorneys from his firm Boies Schiller Flexner to join the plaintiffs’ team.
Representatives for Meta and Farnsworth’s legal counsel at Lieff Cabraser did not promptly reply to inquiries regarding the recent complaint on Wednesday.
Multiple collectives of copyright holders, including authors, visual artists, and music publishers, have initiated legal action against prominent technology firms for the illicit utilization of their creations in the training of generative AI systems.
The businesses contend that their AI training is safeguarded by the copyright doctrine of fair use and that the lawsuits jeopardize the emerging AI industry.
Farnsworth, a resident of Los Angeles, asserted in his lawsuit that his creations were incorporated in a “trove” of illicitly obtained literature utilized by Meta to educate Llama.
He requested the court for an indeterminate sum of monetary damages and an injunction compelling Meta to cease its purported infringement.
The case is Farnsworth v. Meta Platforms Inc, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 3:24-cv-06893.
For Farnsworth: Elizabeth Cabraser, Daniel Hutchinson, Reilly Stoler, and Rachel Geman of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein
