A federal judge sided with Facebook parent Meta Platforms in dismissing a copyright infringement lawsuit from a group of authors who accused the company of stealing their works to train its artificial intelligence technology.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup's ruling this week, in a case brought by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson last year, opens a potential pathway for AI companies to train their large language models on copyrighted works without authors' consent — but only if copies of the works were obtained legally.

The judge said that Meta’s win “may be in significant tension with reality.” His decision in the case only applies to the authors who brought the case, which includes Ta-Nehisi Coates; he noted future plaintiffs could succeed if they present stronger evidence.