The first two judgements in court cases over the use of books to train artificial intelligence (AI) have been made in the US this week with wins for tech giants Meta and Anthropic – but the potential for future action and significant damages for authors remains.

Federal judges side with AI developers in copyright cases, citing fair use while acknowledging potential market impact of AI on creative works.

A federal judge on Wednesday rejected a claim brought by 13 authors, including Sarah Silverman and Junot Díaz, that Meta violated their copyrights by training its AI model on their books. Judge Vincent Chhabria concluded that Meta had engaged in “fair use” when it used a dataset of nearly 200,

“The Court has no choice but to grant summary judgment to Meta on the plaintiffs’ claim that the company violated copyright law by training its models with their books,” wrote US District Court judge Vince Chhabria. He concluded that the plaintiffs did not present sufficient evidence that Meta’s use of their books was harmful.

A federal judge let Meta off the hook for the use of books to train its artificial intelligence model, but it still might face legal challenges by the authors in other ways.

The federal judge who ruled in Meta’s favor still isn’t convinced its use of copyrighted materials for AI training qualifies as fair use.