French Publishers and Authors Take Legal Action Against Meta Over AI Copyright Dispute

A group of major French publishing and authors' organizations have filed a lawsuit against Meta, accusing the tech giant of unlawfully using copyrighted materials to train its artificial intelligence (AI) models.

The National Publishing Union (SNE), the National Union of Authors and Composers (SNAC), and the Society of Men of Letters (SGDL) announced that they submitted the complaint earlier this week in a Paris court. They claim that Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has been utilizing copyrighted works without authorization to refine its AI technology.

"This is an unprecedented level of exploitation of creative content," said Maia Bensimon, general delegate of SNAC.

SNE Director General Renaud Lefebvre described the lawsuit as a classic "David versus Goliath" scenario, stressing that the case could set a significant legal precedent.

While this marks the first legal challenge against an AI company in France, similar lawsuits have been surfacing worldwide. In the United States, authors, visual artists, and music publishers have filed complaints against Meta and other AI developers, arguing that their copyrighted works were harvested without consent.

Among these cases, actress and author Sarah Silverman sued Meta in 2023, alleging that her books were improperly used to train AI models. Similarly, in October 2024, novelist Christopher Farnsworth initiated a lawsuit with similar claims.

Meta is not the only company facing scrutiny. OpenAI, the firm behind ChatGPT, is currently dealing with multiple lawsuits in the U.S., Canada, and India over allegations of unauthorized use of copyrighted material in AI training.

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