Meta Faces Lawsuits and Legal Pressure Over AI and Ad Market - Sarmad

US technology company Meta is facing an escalating series of lawsuits and legal pressures from media organizations, publishers, and press unions in several countries, over allegations related to the use of journalistic content to train artificial intelligence models without licenses, as well as practices linked to the digital advertising market.

In its latest move, the French news agency AFP reported on Tuesday that major Norwegian media institutions, including the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) and the Norwegian News Agency (NTB), filed a lawsuit before the Oslo court to prevent Meta from enforcing new terms of service that grant it broad powers to collect, index, and use media content to develop AI tools and advertising systems.

The United States has also seen lawsuits filed by publishers and authors against the company, accusing it of using millions of copyrighted books and works to train AI models without obtaining licenses or providing adequate compensation.

In Europe, Spanish media organizations are demanding substantial financial compensation, accusing Meta of undermining fair competition in the digital advertising market by exploiting user data in violation of European regulations.

French competition authorities have urged the company to resume negotiations regarding mechanisms to compensate media outlets for the use of their content.

Global debate is intensifying over intellectual property rights in the age of artificial intelligence, with media organizations, publishers, and content companies calling for legal frameworks that ensure fair compensation when journalistic and creative materials are used to train AI models. At the same time, governments and regulatory bodies are moving to tighten oversight of the dominance of major technology companies in content and digital advertising markets.