May 5, 2026 10:46am PT

Mark Zuckerberg ‘Personally Authorized and Actively Encouraged’ Meta’s Massive Copyright Infringement to Train AI Systems, Publishers and Scott Turow Allege in Lawsuit

Todd Spangler

Plus Icon

Todd Spangler

NY Digital Editor

xpangler

Latest

Mark Zuckerberg ‘Personally Authorized and Actively Encouraged’ Meta’s Massive Copyright Infringement to Train AI Systems, Publishers and Scott Turow Allege in Lawsuit

44 minutes ago

James Murdoch in ‘Advanced Talks’ With Vox Media to Buy New York Mag and Podcast Network: Report

3 hours ago

Elon Musk to Pay $1.5 Million to Settle SEC Lawsuit Alleging He Failed to Disclose Twitter Share Purchases Ahead of Acquisition

4 hours ago

See All

Courtesy of Meta

In a new legal battle in the AI space, Meta and CEO Mark Zuckerberg have been sued by five publishers and author Scott Turow, who allege the tech company illegally copied millions of books, articles and other works to train Meta’s artificial-intelligence systems.

“In their effort to win the AI ‘arms race’ and build a functional generative AI model, Defendants Meta and Zuckerberg followed their well-known motto: ‘move fast and break things,’” the plaintiffs say in their lawsuit. “They first illegally torrented millions of copyrighted books and journal articles from notorious pirate sites and downloaded unauthorized web scrapes of virtually the entire internet. They then copied those stolen fruits many times over to train Meta’s multibillion-dollar generative AI system called Llama. In doing so, Defendants engaged in one of the most massive infringements of copyrighted materials in history.”

Mark Zuckerberg 'Personally Authorized and Actively Encouraged' Meta's Massive Copyright Infringement to Train AI Systems, Publishers and Scott Turow Allege in Lawsuit