Chhabria, in his Meta ruling, criticized Alsup’s reasoning on the Anthropic case, arguing that “Alsup focused heavily on the transformative nature of generative AI while brushing aside concerns about the harm it can inflict on the market for the works it gets trained on.”

The suit alleged that Meta violated the authors’ copyrights both in the AI training process and in the process of downloading and reuploading the illicit libraries. While the judge rejected the AI training claim, he was not asked to rule on the torrenting issue, so that remains unresolved.

But creators could have grounds for complaint in future cases they can prove market dilution and unfair competition, judge adds.