Zuckerberg 'Personally Authorized and Encouraged' Meta's Copyright Infringement

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

By Todd Spangler

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Todd Spangler

NY Digital Editor

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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.”

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