Court Documents Reveal Meta's Torrenting of Pirated Material for AI Training
Recent court documents indicate that Meta was involved in illegally downloading pirated books to train their AI models, as employees expressed ethical concerns in emails.
Court documents reveal that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, actively downloaded over 80 terabytes of pirated material to train their AI models through a file-sharing site called LibGen. The discovery highlights internal emails among employees, where concerns about the ethics of utilizing pirated content were discussed.
One email notably mentions that downloading pirated material crosses ethical boundaries, yet another employee humorously described the act of torrenting from a corporate laptop as feeling wrong.
The prosecution argues that even high-ranking executives at Meta, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, were aware of the pirated sources being used for AI training. Allegations suggest that these actions constitute significant internet piracy, raising questions about the legality and morality of such practices in tech.
