France’s leading publishing and authors’ associations have filed a lawsuit against Meta, accusing the U.S. tech company of using copyright-protected content without authorization to train its artificial intelligence (AI) systems.
The National Publishing Union (SNE), the National Union of Authors and Composers (SNAC), and the Society of Men of Letters (SGDL) announced the complaint on Wednesday, stating that the lawsuit was filed earlier this week in a Paris court for alleged copyright infringement and economic “parasitism.”
The associations claim that Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has used copyrighted content to develop its AI models. SNE Director General Renaud Lefebvre described the lawsuit as an example-setting case, while SNAC’s general delegate Maia Bensimon called it “monumental looting.”
This is the first such lawsuit against an AI company in France, but similar cases have been filed in the United States.
Meta is already facing a lawsuit filed in 2023 by American actress and author Sarah Silverman and other writers, who allege the company misused their books to train its large language model Llama. In October 2024, American novelist Christopher Farnsworth launched a similar case against Meta.
Other AI companies are also under legal scrutiny. OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, is facing multiple copyright lawsuits in the United States, Canada, and India.
