Meta Wins Protective Order for Chat Logs in Authors' AI Suit (1)
Chat logs from a former Meta Platforms Inc. AI researcher who claims company lawyers told him that training an AI model on a pirated ebooks database could be illegal are protected by attorney-client privilege, a San Francisco federal court ruled. The group of authors suing Meta for copyright infringement over its AI model cannot use the chat logs and must return them to Meta or destroy them, as per Magistrate Judge Thomas S. Hixson’s protective order.
The Case Background
The authors, including comedian Sarah Silverman and Pulitzer Prize-winner Andrew Sean Greer, argued that Meta waived its privilege over the chat logs and sought to include them in the case as evidence. They claimed that using the pirated ebooks database "Books3" to train its AI models was a copyright hazard.
Court Ruling
Hixson's ruling stated that Meta researcher Tim Dettmers, in his communications on the instant messaging platform Discord with other researchers from the nonprofit group EleutherAI, did not have the authority to waive attorney-client privilege. Meta had no awareness of his external communications, and therefore, he could not waive any privileges.
Lawsuit Journey
The authors initially sued Meta in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging that the company used their copyrighted books without permission to train its open source AI model called LLaMA. While parts of the proposed class action were dismissed, the core claim of copyright infringement is still proceeding.
Dettmers’ Discord chats, where he discussed concerns with using The Pile, an AI training dataset that includes Books3, first emerged in the authors’ amended complaint filed in December 2023. The screenshots of these chats have circulated on LinkedIn, even after the plaintiffs' attorneys redacted the quotes from the amended complaint.
Attorney's Statements
Meta's attorney, Kathleen Hartnett of Cooley LLP, mentioned that Dettmers' communications with outside researchers were a mistake by a lower-level employee. However, Hixson disagreed with the argument that Dettmers' communications were not entitled to attorney-client privilege, as they revealed legal advice from Meta's attorneys.
Legal Representatives
The Saveri Law Firm LLP, and Cafferty Clobes Meriwether & Sprengel LLP represent the authors in the case, while Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP and Lex Lumina PLLC represent Meta.
To contact the reporter on this story: Isaiah Poritz in San Francisco at [email protected]
Editors responsible for this story: Amy Lee Rosen at [email protected], Adam Ramirez at [email protected], Alison Lake at [email protected]
