"The way courts will view the fair use argument for training generative artificial intelligence models with copyrighted materials will be tested Thursday in a San Francisco courtroom, when the first of dozens of such lawsuits reaches summary judgment.

Meta Platforms Inc. and a group of authors including comedian Sarah Silverman will square off before Judge Vince Chhabria, who will decide whether Meta’s use of pirated books to train its AI model Llama qualifies as fair use, or if the issue should be left to a jury.

The proposed class action in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, which also includes journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates and Pulitzer-winning novelist Andrew Sean Greer as plaintiffs, is part of a wave of legal challenges filed nationwide against top generative AI firms including OpenAI Inc., Anthropic PBC, and Google LLC.

OpenAI is battling a recently consolidated group of copyright cases from authors and media organizations including the New York Times in Manhattan federal court, while music publishers and visual artists are also taking aim at AI companies.

A ruling in the authors’ case has the power to profoundly influence copyright law and the billion-dollar business model behind AI, which relies on the belief that training with unlicensed copyrighted content doesn’t violate the law. An adverse ruling for Meta could open it up to potentially billions of dollars in damages.

Chhabria’s decision will “provide a window into, at least, how this court is thinking about fair use in the context of generative AI” and could “send ripples throughout the other cases,” said Kevin Madigan, senior vice president of Policy and Government Affairs at the Copyright Alliance..."

This article was originally published in Bloomberg Law