Meta Faces Criticism For Copyright Double Standards: Protects Own AI Model, Opposes Same For Others

Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:META) has been accused of using copyright law to safeguard its Llama AI model while simultaneously arguing against similar protections for other copyright holders.

What Happened: Meta, formerly known as Facebook, has heavily invested in AI and has released models and AI tools to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. 

The company, along with other tech giants like Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), has argued to the U.S. Copyright Office that the vast amount of copyrighted text, images, and data used to train AI models should not be protected under copyright law, reported Business Insider. 

See Also: ‘It’s Terrible’: Meta’s Zuckerberg Apologizes To Families Of Online Child Abuse Victims At Senate Hearing

However, in early 2023, when an initial version of Meta’s Llama model was leaked online and posted on GitHub, a coding website owned by Microsoft, the Mark Zuckerberg-led company demanded GitHub to take down the model, citing copyright infringement.

But, Meta’s attempt to remove the early Llama model from GitHub failed. The user who posted the Llama details argued that the model’s specifications did not have sufficient originality to be copyrightable as they were copied from the works used to train Llama.

Now… who is going to be the first to make a joke about the irony of Meta using copyright to protect its LLM 😅

— Franklin Graves 🚀 (@franklingraves) January 26, 2024

Despite this, many tech companies, including Microsoft, OpenAI, and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), have argued for more copyright protections for their AI models. 

The report noted that these companies insist that the outputs of their AI models should be protected by copyright, even though the copyrighted inputs used to train the models cannot be similarly protected. 

Why It Matters: The copyright protection of AI models has been a contentious issue for some time. In May 2023, Benzinga reported on the complexities of AI and copyright law, highlighting AI’s breakthroughs in various areas and the concerns raised about copyright protection for AI-generated works.

Meanwhile, it was previously reported that comedian Sarah Silverman and other authors have sued OpenAI and Meta over claims of copyright infringement. They alleged that…