In a seismic ruling for the future of artificial intelligence and copyright law, a California federal judge on Wednesday declared that Meta Platforms Inc. lawfully used copyrighted material to train its large language model (LLM), LLaMA, rejecting a high-profile lawsuit filed by bestselling authors including Sarah Silverman, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Junot Díaz.
The landmark fair use ruling delivered by U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria represents a significant victory for the tech industry, reinforcing legal protections for AI developers that rely on copyrighted text as training material.
A Legal Win Echoing Through Silicon Valley
The decision came just 48 hours after another California judge found in favor of Anthropic PBC in a similar copyright dispute — signaling a growing judicial trend in support of AI training under fair use doctrine.
In his summary judgment order, Judge Chhabria stated bluntly that the plaintiffs failed to show any meaningful harm to the market for their books, a key factor in assessing whether an alleged infringement falls outside the bounds of fair use.
“Meta has defeated the plaintiffs’ half-hearted argument that its copying causes or threatens significant market harm,” Judge Chhabria wrote.
