Meta is fighting three major lawsuits tied to how it built its artificial intelligence products. Two are copyright cases brought by authors and publishers over the books and articles used to train the Llama language models, and the third is a consumer privacy class action over the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. Together, the Meta AI lawsuit docket spans two federal courts, names Mark Zuckerberg personally in one complaint, and turns on unresolved questions about whether tech companies can use copyrighted material and personal data to train AI. Meta won an early fair use ruling in the authors’ case, but distribution and contributory infringement claims survived, the publishers’ suit is just beginning, and the smart glasses case is expanding.
The Authors’ Copyright Case in California
Thirteen authors, including Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Junot Díaz, sued Meta in 2023 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging Meta infringed their copyrights by using their books to train Llama. The case is Kadrey v. Meta Platforms, Inc., No. 3:23-cv-03417.
On June 25, 2025, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria granted Meta partial summary judgment, ruling that using the authors’ books to train Llama qualified as fair use. He framed the outcome narrowly. “This ruling does not stand for the proposition that Meta’s use of copyrighted materials to train its language models is lawful,” he wrote, attributing the result largely to the authors’ failure to present meaningful evidence of market harm.1Courthouse News Service. Judge Reluctantly Sides With Meta in Sarah Silverman Authors AI Copyright Suit Chhabria floated a “market dilution” theory for future cases: if plaintiffs can show that AI output floods the market and competes with original works, training may not be fair use even without direct copying.2Authors Alliance. Meta Wins on Fair Use for Now but Court Leaves Door Open for Market Dilution
What Survived the Ruling
The training-related copyright claims went Meta’s way. A separate set of claims did not. The authors alleged that Meta obtained the books by torrenting them from pirate sites, including Library Genesis, and that in the process Meta “seeded” the files back onto the network, distributing pirated copies to others.3CNBC. Meta Llama AI Copyright Ruling
Discovery produced internal Meta communications on the sourcing. Meta research engineer Nikolay Bashlykov wrote in April 2023 that “Torrenting from a corporate laptop doesn’t feel right,” and by September he was flagging to Meta’s legal team that torrenting inherently shares content back out and “could be legally not OK.” Another researcher, Frank Zhang, described the work as done in “stealth mode” so downloads could not be traced to Facebook servers.4Ars Technica. Meta Torrented Over 81.7TB of Pirated Books to Train AI, Authors Say Internal messages also warned that reporting on a “dataset we know to be pirated, such as LibGen” could “undermine our negotiating position with regulators.”5Wired. New Documents Unredacted Meta Copyright AI Lawsuit
In December 2025, the authors moved to add a contributory infringement claim, arguing that Meta facilitated infringement by uploading files onto the torrent network while downloading its training data. Judge Chhabria granted the amendment on March 25, 2026, though he criticized plaintiffs’ counsel for the delay and called their explanation “doubletalk.” He allowed the claim in part because excluding it might prevent absent class members from ever raising it later.6Ars Technica. Meta Hopes SCOTUS Piracy Ruling Will Help It Beat Lawsuit Over Torrenting AI Data As of mid-2026, discovery on the distribution and contributory infringement claims is ongoing, and the class has not been certified.7Norton Rose Fulbright. AI in Litigation Series: An Update on AI Copyright Cases in 2026
The Publishers’ Class Action in New York
On May 5, 2026, five publishing houses and author Scott Turow filed a proposed class action against Meta and Mark Zuckerberg personally in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The publishers are Elsevier, Cengage, Hachette, Macmillan, and McGraw Hill. The complaint alleges willful copyright infringement in the development of every Llama model from Llama 1 through Llama 4, as well as Meta’s Muse Spark AI system.8Association of American Publishers. Publishers and Authors File Class Action Lawsuit Against Meta and Zuckerberg
The publishers say Meta downloaded unauthorized web scrapes of internet content, including subscription-only material, and torrented copyrighted books and journal articles from LibGen and Anna’s Archive. They also allege Meta stripped copyright management information from the works to conceal their origins, and describe Llama as an “infinite substitution machine” that produces content competing directly with original works.9Association of American Publishers. Complaint, Elsevier Inc. v. Meta Platforms, Inc. Specific titles named as infringed works include N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season, Peter Brown’s The Wild Robot,10The Guardian. Publishers Sue Meta Copyright AI and Turow’s 1987 legal thriller Presumed Innocent. The proposed class covers all copyright owners of books with ISBNs or journal articles with DOIs or ISSNs.11NPR. Scott Turow Meta Lawsuit
Why Zuckerberg Is Named
The complaint alleges Zuckerberg “personally authorized and actively encouraged the infringement,” specifically by approving a decision to stop pursuing licensing deals and rely on a fair use defense instead.12The New York Times. Publishers, Turow, Meta Zuckerberg Lawsuit Copyright That claim tracks with material unearthed in Kadrey, where an internal memo referenced that “after escalation to MZ,” Meta’s AI team “has been approved to use LibGen.”13The Guardian. Mark Zuckerberg Meta Books AI Models Sarah Silverman
Where the Case Stands
The case is assigned to Judge P. Kevin Castel. As of mid-June 2026, Meta had not filed a formal response. It filed a pre-motion letter on June 5 signaling that it intended to move to transfer the case, with a June 26 deadline set for that motion.14PACER Monitor. Elsevier Inc. et al. v. Meta Platforms, Inc. et al. The publishers are seeking monetary damages and an injunction requiring Meta to destroy all infringing copies in its possession.8Association of American Publishers. Publishers and Authors File Class Action Lawsuit Against Meta and Zuckerberg
The Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses Privacy Case
Meta also faces a proposed class action over its Ray-Ban Meta AI smart glasses. Gina Bartone and Mateo Canu filed the suit on March 4, 2026, against Meta and manufacturing partner Luxottica of America in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 3:26-cv-01897.15Top Class Actions. Class Action Claims Meta AI Glasses Recordings Used to Train AI Without Users’ Knowledge
The complaint alleges Meta marketed the glasses with promises like “designed for privacy, controlled by you” while failing to disclose that footage captured by the glasses was transmitted to Meta’s servers and then to a subcontractor in Kenya, where human workers manually reviewed and labeled the recordings to train Meta’s AI. According to the complaint, that footage included private domestic activities, nudity, and sexual acts.16TechCrunch. Meta Sued Over AI Smartglasses Privacy Concerns After Workers Reviewed Nudity, Sex, and Other Footage
The suit is grounded in California’s Unfair Competition Law, its False Advertising Law, the Consumers Legal Remedies Act, and the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act. It does not bring wiretapping claims.17MediaLaws. Designed for Privacy: The Bartone v. Meta Litigation Over AI Smart Glasses The Clarkson Law Firm later filed an amended complaint that expanded the named plaintiffs from two to nineteen and broadened the proposed class to cover sixteen states. The plaintiffs seek monetary damages, restitution, and injunctive relief for U.S. purchasers of the glasses.18Engadget. Meta Hit With a Class Action Lawsuit Over Smart Glasses Privacy Claims Meta had not filed a formal defense by mid-2026, and an initial case management conference was set for June 2026.
How Meta Is Defending the Cases
Meta has leaned primarily on fair use. A company spokesperson said “fair use of copyright material is a vital legal framework for building this transformative technology.”19Bloomberg Law. Meta Beats Copyright Suit From Authors Over AI Training on Books In court, Meta has argued that Llama uses text to “statistically model language and generate original expression,” and that the outputs differ fundamentally from the inputs.5Wired. New Documents Unredacted Meta Copyright AI Lawsuit
In Kadrey, Meta also argued that making AI companies pay for training data would hamper the technology’s growth. Judge Chhabria rejected that argument, saying it “doesn’t pass the straight face test.”19Bloomberg Law. Meta Beats Copyright Suit From Authors Over AI Training on Books In the publishers’ New York case, Meta’s opening move is procedural: its pre-motion letter signals it will seek to transfer the case rather than address the merits at this stage.14PACER Monitor. Elsevier Inc. et al. v. Meta Platforms, Inc. et al.
Parallel AI Cases That Could Shape Meta’s
Several other AI cases are running alongside Meta’s and will likely influence how its remaining claims are resolved. The closest comparison is the $1.5 billion settlement in Bartz v. Anthropic, where Anthropic agreed to pay roughly $3,000 per pirated work for about 500,000 books downloaded from shadow libraries. Final approval awaits a fairness hearing on May 14, 2026. The settlement drew a distinction that maps directly onto Meta’s exposure: training on lawfully obtained copies may be fair use, but using pirated copies is not.20NPR. Anthropic Settlement Authors Copyright AI The Authors Guild has argued that principle should apply to Meta given the LibGen evidence.21Authors Guild. Meta AI Ruling: Meta Gets Technical Win but Law Favors Authors
The New York Times v. OpenAI and Microsoft, filed in the Southern District of New York in December 2023, is approaching summary judgment, with a ruling expected in the second half of 2026. A New York ruling that diverges from the California courts could set up a circuit split on appeal.22AI Lawsuit Tracker. New York Times v. OpenAI In Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence, a Delaware judge found that Ross’s use of copyrighted Westlaw headnotes to train a competing AI legal research tool was not fair use, the first federal ruling to reject a fair use defense in an AI training case on the merits.23Wolf Greenfield. Fair Use in AI Copyright Litigation: A Surprising Turn in Thomson Reuters v. Ross The Authors Guild has said it expects the Kadrey fair use ruling to be “ultimately reversed, on appeal.”21Authors Guild. Meta AI Ruling: Meta Gets Technical Win but Law Favors Authors