Mark Zuckerberg faces deposition in AI copyright lawsuit from Sarah Silverman and other authors

SAN FRANCISCO — Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be deposed as part of a lawsuit brought by authors including comedian Sarah Silverman accusing the company of copyright infringement to train its artificial intelligence technology.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Hixson rejected Meta’s bid to bar the deposition of Zuckerberg in a decision Tuesday, saying there is sufficient evidence to show he is the “principal decision maker” for the company's AI platforms.

Meta had argued that Zuckerberg doesn’t have unique knowledge of the company’s AI operations and that the same information could be obtained from depositions with other employees.

The authors have “submitted evidence of his specific involvement in the company’s AI initiatives,” as well as his “direct supervision of Meta’s AI products,” Hixson wrote in a Tuesday ruling.

The class action lawsuit was filed last year in California federal court. The authors accuse Meta of illegally downloading digital copies of their books and using them — without consent or compensation — to train its AI platforms.

Also this week, prominent attorney David Boies joined the case on behalf of Silverman and the group of other plaintiffs that includes writer Ta-Nehisi Coates and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

Boies is best known for representing Al Gore in the 2000 disputed election against George W. Bush.

The case against Meta is one of a set of similar lawsuits in San Francisco and New York against other AI chatbot developers including Anthropic, Microsoft and ChatGPT maker OpenAI.