US federal judge on Meta's AI copyright fair use argument: 'You are dramatically changing, you might even say obliterating, the market for that person's work'

Mallet of a judge, with books and scales of justice in background, of a court-like scene. on the floor, place for typography. Courtroom theme.

Comedian Sarah Silverman and two other authors filed copyright infringement lawsuits against Meta Platforms and OpenAI back in 2023, alleging pirated versions of their works were used without permission to train AI language models. Meta has since argued that such usage falls under fair use doctrine (via Reuters), but US federal district judge Vince Chhabria seems to have been less than impressed by the defence:

"You have companies using copyright-protected material to create a product that is capable of producing an infinite number of competing products," said Chhabria to Meta's attorneys in a San Francisco court last Thursday.