Meta’s AI Copyright Fight Just Escalated and Hollywood Is Watching Closely; Los Angeles Magazine, May 7, 2026

 DEVON JAMES , Los Angeles Magazine; Meta’s AI Copyright Fight Just Escalated and Hollywood Is Watching Closely

A new lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg and Meta could reshape how studios, publishers and tech companies train the next generation of artificial intelligence

"The AI Gold Rush Is Running Into Copyright Law

According to the lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court, Meta allegedly pulled material from massive libraries of pirated books and scraped internet content to train Llama, the company’s flagship large language model. Publishers argue the practice amounts to one of the largest copyright violations in modern history."

Mark Zuckerberg ‘personally authorized’ Meta’s copyright infringement, publishers allege; AP, May 5, 2026

 HILLEL ITALIE , AP; Mark Zuckerberg ‘personally authorized’ Meta’s copyright infringement, publishers allege

"The plaintiffs allege that Zuckerberg and Meta “followed their well-known motto ‘move fast and break things’” by illegally drawing upon a massive trove of books and journal articles for Llama."

Scott Turow's latest real-life legal thriller: Suing Meta for copyright infringement; NPR, May 5, 2026

 Chloe Veltman, NPR ; Scott Turow's latest real-life legal thriller: Suing Meta for copyright infringement

""All Americans should understand that the bold future promised by A.I., has been, to paraphrase the investigative writer Alex Reisner, created with stolen words," said Turow in a statement to NPR. "It is all the more shameful that these violations of the law were undertaken by one of the richest corporations in the world."

According to the complaint, Meta "briefly considered licensing deals with major publishers" but changed its strategy in April 2023. The question of whether to license or pirate moving forward was "escalated" to Zuckerberg, after which, the complaint alleges, Meta's business development team received verbal instructions to stop licensing efforts. "If we license once [sic] single book, we won't be able to lean into the fair use strategy," a Meta employee is quoted as saying in the complaint.

"It's the most flagrant copyright breach in history," said Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger in a statement to NPR. "And these voracious tech companies need to be held accountable.""

Publishers sue Meta, claiming it violated copyrights in training AI with their books; The Washington Post, May 5, 2026

 Maegan Vazquez, The Washington Post; Publishers sue Meta, claiming it violated copyrights in training AI with their books

"The case, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, is the latest in a string of lawsuits brought by publishers, authors, artists, photographers and news outlets aimed at forcing tech companies to compensate them for using their works to train their AI models. The plaintiffs argue in the lawsuit that the AI model’s ability to quickly produce knockoffs and summaries of copyrighted books threatens the livelihoods of publishers and authors.

A Meta spokesperson said in a statement that the company would “fight this lawsuit aggressively.”

“AI is powering transformative innovations, productivity and creativity for individuals and companies, and courts have rightly found that training AI on copyrighted material can qualify as fair use,” the spokesperson said.

The publishers’ complaint states Meta distributed millions of copyrighted works without authorization and without compensating authors or publishers, claiming that Zuckerberg “personally authorized and actively encouraged the infringement.” They also claim that Meta removed copyright notices and copyright management information from the works used to train the AI model, known as Llama."

Even More Authors, Publishers Sue Meta Over Copyright in AI Training: What's Different Now; CNET, May 5, 2026

 Katelyn Chedraoui , CNET; Even More Authors, Publishers Sue Meta Over Copyright in AI Training: What's Different Now

Meta won a previous AI lawsuit brought by authors. Publishers are taking a different route this time.

"New lawsuit, same questions

Copyright is one of the most contentious legal issues around AI. Tech companies like Meta need high-quality, human-created data to build and refine their AI models. Nearly all of this material is protected by copyright. That means tech companies have to enter into licensing agreements or defend their use of the content as fair use under a provision of copyright law.

Meta and Anthropic have both won previous cases in lawsuits brought by authors, successfully defending their fair use. Anthropic agreed to settle some piracy claims with authors for $1.5 billion, or about $3,000 per pirated work. Both judges warned in their decisions that this won't be the result in every lawsuit...

One of the biggest considerations in these cases is whether tech companies' use of copyrighted books will make it harder for human authors to sell their work or otherwise affect the marketplace."

Complaint: ELSEVIER INC., CENGAGE LEARNING, INC., HACHETTE BOOK GROUP, INC., MACMILLAN PUBLISHING GROUP, LLC D/B/A MACMILLAN PUBLISHERS, MCGRAW HILL LLC, SCOTT TUROW, and S.C.R.I.B.E., INC., individually and on behalf of others similarly situated, Plaintiffs, v. META PLATFORMS, INC. and MARK ZUCKERBERG, Defendants.; May 5, 2026

 Complaint: ELSEVIER INC., CENGAGE LEARNING, INC., HACHETTE BOOK GROUP, INC., MACMILLAN PUBLISHING GROUP, LLC D/B/A MACMILLAN PUBLISHERS, MCGRAW HILL LLC, SCOTT TUROW, and S.C.R.I.B.E., INC., individually and on behalf of others similarly situated,

Plaintiffs,

v.

META PLATFORMS, INC. and MARK ZUCKERBERG,

Defendants.

Five Publishers and Scott Turow Sue Meta and Mark Zuckerberg; The New York Times, May 5, 2026

 Alexandra Alter , The New York Times; Five Publishers and Scott Turow Sue Meta and Mark Zuckerberg

The class-action lawsuit accuses the tech giant and its founder and chief executive of infringing on authors’ copyrights.

"Five major publishers — Hachette, Macmillan, McGraw Hill, Elsevier and Cengage — and the best-selling novelist Scott Turow have filed a class-action copyright infringement lawsuit against Meta and its founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg.

The complaint, which was filed on Tuesday morning in United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, accuses Meta and Zuckerberg of illegally using millions of copyrighted works to train their artificial intelligence program Llama, and of removing copyright notices and other copyright management information from those works.

The lawsuit asserts that Meta’s engineers relied on pirated books and journal articles to train the program by downloading unlicensed copies through websites like Anna’s Archive, an open source search engine for piracy sites including LibGen and Sci-Hub. The suit also claims that “Zuckerberg himself personally authorized and actively encouraged the infringement.”"

Major publishers sued Meta for pirating millions of books to train its AI; Quartz, May 5, 2026

Cris Tolomia, Quartz; Major publishers sued Meta for pirating millions of books to train its AI

"Five major publishers and best-selling novelist Scott Turow filed a class-action copyright infringement lawsuit against Meta$META -1.49% and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday, alleging the company pirated millions of books and journal articles to train its Llama artificial intelligence models."

Meta will cut 10% of workforce as company pushes deeper into AI; CNBC, April 23, 2026

 Jonathan Vanian, CNBC; Meta will cut 10% of workforce as company pushes deeper into AI

"Meta plans to lay off 10% of its workforce, equaling about 8,000 jobs, as it continues ramping up investments in artificial intelligence.

The cuts will begin on May 20, and the company is scrapping plans to hire people for 6,000 open roles, according to a Thursday memo to employees. Bloomberg was first to report on the layoffs. 

Meta’s latest round of cuts follows several smaller job reductions that the company said was necessary to to improve efficiency while focusing its efforts on generative AI, where it’s lagged OpenAI, Google and Anthropic."

Technology Leadership Includes a Duty to Care for our Most Vulnerable Populations; Santa Clara University Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, April 20, 2026

Ann Skeet , Santa Clara University Markkula Center for Applied Ethics; Technology Leadership Includes a Duty to Care for our Most Vulnerable Populations

"Notably, what Meta did not say after the verdict was that it was sorry for the harms children experienced."

A Stunning New Verdict Rewrites the Rules of Corporate Morality; The New York Times, April 17, 2026

M. GESSEN, The New York Times; A Stunning New Verdict Rewrites the Rules of Corporate Morality 

"At the conference I met Rebecca Hamilton, a cheerful war-crimes lawyer who is now a law professor at American University in Washington. Corporate complicity is her area of study. In a 2022 law review article titled “Platform-Enabled Crimes,” she wrote that Facebook (now Meta) could have acted to help prevent the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar in 2017 but that it had chosen not to. The decision not to act, Hamilton wrote, had been driven by both the profit motive and a lack of interest in local context. Now Hamilton is working on a book on corporate enablers of atrocity crime. “Securing profit isn’t some abstraction achieved in pristine boardrooms in capital cities,” she wrote in an email to me on Monday after the Lafarge verdict, which had made her, too, very happy. “It is a process that plays out in real locations, with real people, including those living through conflict.”"

Trump Library Saga Takes Dark Turn: Where Did Millions in Funding Go?; The New Republic, April 20, 2026

Greg Sargent, The New Republic ; Trump Library Saga Takes Dark Turn: Where Did Millions in Funding Go?

Four huge media conglomerates forked over $63 million in “settlements” earmarked for Trump’s presidential library. Democrats are trying to track that money—and the latest developments don’t inspire confidence.

"Last year, four huge companies pledged tens of millions of dollars to help fund the creation of Donald Trump’s presidential library, a planned monstrosity in Miami that—in a perfect Trumpian twist—may also double as a hotel. The companies—ABC; Paramount; Meta; and X, formerly Twitter—entered into the agreements with Trump to settle legal cases he’d brought against them, which experts had dismissed as dubious.

Now there’s been an important new turn in this saga. The four companies have provided fresh information to Senate Democrats in written responses to their questions. For these Democrats, those responses—obtained by The New Republic—raise more questions than they answer. 

In these formal replies, all four companies confirmed that they did pledge that money to Trump’s library—itself a notable development. More importantly, however, the Democrats say the responses reveal that the money is still largely unaccounted for.

“Not one of these companies can say with any clarity where their multi-million-dollar donations to Donald Trump’s library slush fund are, or where they will go,” Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who’s taken the lead in tracking this money, tells me in a statement."

Meta debuts new AI model, attempting to catch Google, OpenAI after spending billions; CNBC, April 8, 2026

 Jonathan Vanian, CNBC; Meta debuts new AI model, attempting to catch Google, OpenAI after spending billions

"Meta is debuting its first major artificial intelligence model since the costly hiring of Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang nine months ago, as the Facebook parent aims to carve out a niche in a market that’s being dominated by OpenAI, Anthropic and Google.

Dubbed Muse Spark and originally codenamed Avocado, the AI model announced Wednesday is the first from the company’s new Muse series developed by Meta Superintelligence Labs, the AI unit that Wang oversees. Wang joined Meta in June as part of the company’s $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI, where he was CEO."

‘I always considered social media evil’: big tobacco whistleblower on tech’s addictive products; The Guardian, April 5, 2026

Sanya Manor, The Guardian ; ‘I always considered social media evil’: big tobacco whistleblower on tech’s addictive products

"A key whistleblower in the tobacco industry’s landmark trials of the 1990s has been watching big tech’s recent court battles closely. Jeffrey Stephen Wigand, a biochemist who helped reveal how tobacco companies targeted children and hid just how addictive cigarettes were, has been struck with a feeling of familiarity. Last week’s verdict in a major social media trial that Meta and YouTube deliberately designed addictive products has only strengthened comparisons to the legal crackdown on big tobacco. Wigand sees it, too. His first thought, as he learned about the litigation in California, was that social media companies, through their advertisements, were trying to addict children – much like the tobacco industry did."

Meta’s court losses spell potential trouble for AI research, consumer safety; CNBC, March 29, 2026

Jonathan Vanian , CNBC; Meta’s court losses spell potential trouble for AI research, consumer safety

"Over a decade ago, Meta then known as Facebook – hired social science researchers to analyze how the social network’s services were affecting users. It was a way for the company and its peers to show they were serious about understanding the benefits and potential risks of their innovations. 

But as Meta’s court losses this week illustrate, the researchers’ work can become a liability. Brian Boland, a former Facebook executive who testified in both trials — one in New Mexico and the other in Los Angeles — says the damning findings from Meta’s internal research and documents seemed to contradict the way the company portrayed itself publicly. Juries in the two trials determined that Meta inadequately policed its site, putting kids in harm’s way. 

Mark Zuckerberg’s company began clamping down on its research teams a few years ago after a Facebook researcher, Frances Haugen, became a prominent whistleblower. The newer crop of tech companies, like OpenAI and Anthropic, subsequently invested heavily in researchers and charged them with studying the impact of modern AI on users and publishing their findings. 

With AI now getting outsized attention for the harmful effects it’s having on some users, those companies must ask if it’s in their best interest to continue funding research or to suppress it."

The Terrible Cost of the Infinite Scroll; The New York Times, March 26, 2026

Julia Angwin , The New York Times; The Terrible Cost of the Infinite Scroll

"It finally happened: Social media companies have been held accountable for the toxicity of their algorithmic grip.

In a first ruling of its kind, a California Superior Court jury found Wednesday that Meta and YouTube harmed a user through their addictive design choices.

The consequences for the industry could be significant. This case is only one of thousands set to be litigated across the country, and courts are seeking to consolidate them. This could wind up with a single significant settlement similar to the agreement that the four largest cigarette makers made in 1998 to resolve lawsuits for an estimated $206 billion as part of a master agreement with 46 states.

Compensating people for the harm caused by their products is just the silver lining. The real win would be if the social media giants were finally forced to design less harmful products."

Is Big Tech Facing a Big Tobacco Moment?; The New York Times, March 26, 2026

Andrew Ross Sorkin, Bernhard Warner, Sarah Kessler, Michael J. de la Merced, Niko Gallogly,Brian O’Keefe and Ian Mount, The New York Times; Is Big Tech Facing a Big Tobacco Moment?

Back-to-back courtroom losses have put technology giants, including Meta and Google, in uncertain territory as they face lawsuits and bans on teen users.

"Andrew here. Back in 2018, I moderated a panel at the World Economic Forum that included Marc Benioff of Salesforce. It was then that he essentially declared that Facebook was the modern-day equivalent of cigarettes, and that it and other social media companies should be regulated as such.

Well, Meta’s loss in court on Wednesday, in a case about whether its platforms were designed to be addictive to adolescents, may be a watershed. Investors don’t seem to be fazed — the company’s shares hardly moved after the verdict came out — but the decision could change the conversation around the company yet again. More below...

Some legal experts wonder if Big Tech is staring at a Big Tobacco moment, a reference to how cigarette makers had to overhaul their businesses — at a huge expense — after courts ruled that some of their products were addictive and harmful.

“We’re in a new era, a digital era, where we have to rethink definitions for products based on which entities might have superior information to prevent these injuries and accidents,” Catherine Sharkey, a professor of law at N.Y.U., told The Times. She added that the “implications” of those verdicts were “very, very big.”

“This has potentially large impacts on other areas in tech, A.I. and beyond that,” Jessica Nall, a San Francisco lawyer who represents tech companies and executives, told The Wall Street Journal. “The floodgates are already open.”

Meta and Google plan to appeal. The companies have signaled that they will fight efforts to make them drastically redesign their products and algorithms."

Juries Take the Lead in the Push for Child Online Safety; The New York Times, March 26, 2026

Cecilia Kang, The New York Times; Juries Take the Lead in the Push for Child Online Safety

A pair of verdicts held social media companies accountable for harming young users, highlighting a growing backlash as Congress struggles to pass legislation.

"But this week, two juries held social media companies accountable for harming young users.

In Los Angeles on Wednesday, a jury decided in favor of a plaintiff who had claimed that Meta and YouTube hooked her with addictive features — a verdict validating a novel legal strategy holding the companies accountable for personal injury. And a day earlier in New Mexico, a jury found Meta liable for violating state law by failing to safeguard users of its apps from child predators.

The landmark decisions highlight a growing backlash against social media and its effects on young people, including criticism from parents and policymakers around the globe that it is contributing to a youth mental health crisis. And they show that the push for change may finally be gaining steam.

U.S. lawmakers said on Wednesday that the verdicts underscored the need for child safety legislation. Senators Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, and Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, called for legislators to pass their bill, the Kids Online Safety Act.

Federal momentum would build on laws in more than 30 states banning phones in schools. Globally, Australia in December banned social media for those under 16. Spain, Denmark, France, Malaysia and Indonesia are considering similar restrictions."

Meta and YouTube Found Negligent in Landmark Social Media Addiction Case; The New York Times, March 25, 2026

Cecilia Kang, Ryan Mac and Eli Tan, The New York Times ; Meta and YouTube Found Negligent in Landmark Social Media Addiction Case

A jury found the companies negligent in their app designs, harming a young user with design features that were addictive and led to her mental health distress.

"The social media company Meta and the video streaming service YouTube harmed a young user with design features that were addictive and led to her mental health distress, a jury found on Wednesday, a landmark decision that could open social media companies to more lawsuits over users’ well-being.

Meta and YouTube must pay $3 million in compensatory damages for pain and suffering and other financial burdens. Meta is responsible for 70 percent of that cost and YouTube for the remainder.

The bellwether case, which was brought by a now 20-year-old woman identified as K.G.M., had accused social media companies of creating products as addictive as cigarettes or digital casinos. K.G.M. sued Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, and Google’s YouTube over features like infinite scroll and algorithmic recommendations that she claimed led to anxiety and depression.

The jury of seven women and five men will deliberate further to decide what punitive damages the companies should pay for malice or fraud."

Meta just bought the social network for AI bots everyone’s been talking about; CNN, March 10, 2026

 Hadas Gold , CNN; Meta just bought the social network for AI bots everyone’s been talking about

"Meta, the company behind some of the world’s most popular social media platforms, just scooped up a new site – for bots.

Meta has acquired Moltbook, the social media network where AI agents interact with one another autonomously, the company said in a statement on Tuesday.

Meta is competing with rivals like OpenAI for both talent and users’ attention. And as AI expands into more aspects of Americans’ lives, tech companies are trying to figure out the best way to position themselves to win what’s becoming a sort of technological arms race.

Moltbook became the talk of Silicon Valley last month, racking up millions of registered bots within days of its launch. Some in the industry saw it as a major leap because it demonstrated what can happen when AI agents socialize with one another like humans. Others said the site is full of sham agents, AI slop and security risks and should be viewed skeptically."