TLDR: A U.S. Senate hearing on July 16, 2025, saw strong criticism directed at leading AI companies, including Meta and Anthropic, for their alleged use of copyrighted materials, particularly pirated books, to train generative AI models. Senator Josh Hawley labeled the practice as ‘the largest intellectual property theft in American history,’ despite recent court decisions that have, in some instances, favored AI companies’ fair use arguments. The hearing underscored the ongoing legal battles, with over 40 copyright lawsuits currently filed against AI firms.
On July 16, 2025, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism convened a pivotal hearing to scrutinize the artificial intelligence industry’s extensive use of copyrighted works for training purposes. The session brought to the forefront heated debates surrounding intellectual property rights in the age of generative AI.
Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who chairs the subcommittee, delivered a scathing critique of the practice, asserting that the use of copyrighted material for training generative AI models constitutes ‘the largest intellectual property theft in American history.’ Hawley specifically challenged Meta Platforms Inc., highlighting revelations from the hearing that Meta had allegedly utilized over 200 terabytes of authors’ copyrighted works without explicit permission. Internal text messages between Meta staffers and AI engineers, displayed by Hawley, revealed significant ethical concerns within the company, with one engineer stating, ‘I don’t think we should use pirated material. I really need to draw a line there,’ and another acknowledging, ‘It’s the piracy (and us knowing and being accomplices) that’s the issue.’
The hearing took place just weeks after two federal judges in San Francisco issued rulings suggesting that AI companies like Meta and Anthropic might be permitted to use books without permission under the ‘fair use’ doctrine. However, these rulings are limited in scope and do not guarantee similar outcomes in other cases, with the ultimate decision likely resting with the Supreme Court. AI companies, including Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic, are currently embroiled in more than 40 copyright lawsuits filed by authors and other creators. While these companies do not dispute feeding copyrighted works into their large language models, they contend that AI training is ‘highly transformative’ and thus protected by fair use.
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Notably, the tech industry did not have a representative present at the hearing. Instead, Senator Hawley and his Democratic colleagues heard testimony from author David Baldacci, who is actively suing OpenAI, alongside copyright experts from legal and academic fields. The discussions also touched upon broader implications, including the lack of transparency regarding which copyrighted works are used, the potential for market dilution by AI-generated content, and the complex question of whether AI-generated works should themselves be eligible for copyright protection. Proposals for collective licensing regimes were also discussed, though concerns were raised about their potential to eliminate fair use and introduce significant practical challenges.
