A federal district judge for the Northern District of California dismissed most claims by Sarah Silverman and others in the class action lawsuit against Meta over the unauthorized use of authors’ copyrighted books to train Meta’s LLaMA generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) model. This is the second ruling where a court has sided with the AI defendant. Last month, another federal judge from the same district dismissed claims against Midjourney and DeviantArt for infringement, right of publicity, unfair competition and breach of contract. Andersen v. Stability AI Ltd., No. 3:23-cv-00201 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 30, 2023).

In his November 20, 2023 opinion, Judge Vince Chhabria (“Chhabria”) described some of Silverman’s claims as “nonsensical,” writing that “[t]here is no way to understand the LLaMA models themselves as a recasting or adaptation of any of the plaintiffs’ books.” Chhabria also threw out the plaintiffs’ arguments that every LLaMA output was “an infringing derivative” work and “constitutes an act of vicarious copyright infringement;” that LLaMA violated the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (“DMCA”); and that LLaMA “unjustly enriched Meta” and “breached a duty of care ‘to act in a reasonable manner towards others’ by copying the plaintiffs’ books to train LLaMA.” While Meta’s motion to dismiss these claims was successful, it has yet to challenge the plaintiffs’ primary argument that Meta violated copyright law by using their books to train LLaMA. With this key argument still at issue, Chhabria granted the plaintiffs 21 days to file an amended complaint. Kadrey v. Meta Platforms Inc., No. 3:23-cv-03417 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 20, 2023).