News Summary

Recent court filings reveal that Meta Platforms Inc. has paused its efforts to license books for AI training. This decision is part of the ongoing case Kadrey v. Meta, highlighting challenges in negotiating licensing agreements with publishers. Meta’s outreach to publishers faced slow uptake and logistical hurdles, particularly in the fiction category, where publishers often did not have the rights to license content. Meta’s AI partnership leader, Sy Choudhury, noted that similar licensing efforts for other AI projects have been paused in the past. The plaintiffs, including authors Sarah Silverman and Ta-Nehisi Coates, allege Meta used ‘shadow libraries’ containing pirated e-books to train its AI models, further accusing Meta of copyright infringement.