Meta Secretly Trained Its AI on a Notorious Piracy Database, Newly Unredacted Court Docs Reveal

Meta lost a legal battle regarding its AI training practices, with a court unsealing documents revealing the company used pirated books from Library Genesis (LibGen) to train its AI models. The lawsuit, initiated by authors alleging copyright infringement, challenges the legality of using copyrighted material for AI training.

The court criticized Meta for attempting to redact information to avoid negative publicity, not to protect business interests, and ordered the release of the unredacted documents. These documents include internal communications showing Meta employees were aware of LibGen's pirated nature and that the use of this data was escalated to CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

The plaintiffs argue that Meta not only used copyrighted material without permission but also distributed it via torrenting, while Meta claims the plaintiffs knew about the LibGen use earlier.