Have you heard about the recent allegations against Meta, formerly known as Facebook? It has been revealed in court documents that Meta used pirated books from Library Genesis to train its AI models. Surprisingly, Mark Zuckerberg himself approved of this questionable practice, despite the legal and ethical concerns surrounding it.

Library Genesis, also known as LibGen, is a “shadow library” that provides free access to a wide range of books, articles, and magazines. The fact that a tech giant like Meta resorted to using pirated content from this platform sheds light on the lengths some companies go to acquire data for their AI projects.

While Meta and other AI leaders argue that using such data falls under “fair use,” ongoing legal battles with authors like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Sarah Silverman will ultimately determine the legitimacy of this defense. Newly unredacted documents also reveal Meta employees’ discomfort with the dubious nature of their actions, with one engineer expressing unease about torrenting content from a corporate laptop.

The involvement of Mark Zuckerberg in approving the use of pirated material further challenges Meta’s claims of innocence. Plaintiffs argue that this revelation undermines any defense Meta may present, especially considering evidence suggesting the company actively disseminated the pirated books by seeding their torrents.

This case brings to light the ethical and legal dilemmas that arise in the tech industry’s quest for data for AI development. It will be interesting to see how this controversy impacts Meta and other companies’ practices in the future.