Plaintiffs' Argument That Meta's Large Language Model Is An Infringing Derivative Work Makes Judge's Head Explode 🤯

Today I report on another opinion out of the Central District of California that addresses whether generative AI tools infringe upon the rights of copyright owners. (For our coverage of other recent AI cases, see this post and this post.)

The plaintiffs (Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, and Christopher Golden) are authors of best-selling books. Earlier this year, the trio sued Meta, claiming that its large language models (known as LLaMA) infringed upon their copyrights. Specifically, the plaintiffs alleged (among other claims) that (1) Meta was guilty of direct copyright infringement for using their books to train LLaMA, (2) the LLaMA models are themselves infringing derivative works, and (3) all outputs that LLaMA generates based on user prompts also are infringing derivative works. Meta moved to dismiss all counts except for the central (and juiciest) one, i.e., the plaintiffs' claim that Meta's use of their books in training constituted infringement. Resolution