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Meta’s use of millions of books to train its artificial intelligence models has been judged “fair” by a federal court on Wednesday, in a win for tech companies that use copyrighted materials to develop AI.

The case, brought by about a dozen authors, including Ta-Nehisi Coates and Richard Kadrey, challenged how the $1.4tn social media giant used a library of millions of online books, academic articles and comics to train its Llama AI models.

Meta’s use of these titles is protected under copyright law’s fair use provision, San Francisco district judge Vince Chhabria ruled. The Big Tech firm had argued that the works had been used to develop a transformative technology, which was fair “irrespective” of how it acquired the works.

This case is among dozens of legal battles working their way through the courts, as creators seek greater financial rights when their works are used to train AI models that may disrupt their livelihoods — while companies profit from the technology.

However, Chhabria warned that his decision reflected the authors’ failure to properly make their case.

“This ruling does not stand for the proposition that Meta’s use of copyrighted materials to train its language models is lawful,” he said. “It stands only for the proposition that these plaintiffs made the wrong arguments and failed to develop a record in support of the right one.”

It is the second victory in a week for tech groups that develop AI, after a federal judge on Monday ruled in favour of San Francisco start-up Anthropic in a similar case.

Anthropic had trained its Claude models on legally purchased physical books that were cut up and manually scanned, which the ruling said constituted “fair use”. However, the judge added that there would need to be a separate trial for claims that it pirated millions of books digitally for training.

The Meta case dealt with LibGen, a so-called online shadow library that hosts much of its content without permission from the rights holders.

Chhabria suggested a “potentially winning argument” in the Meta case would be market dilution, referring to the damage caused to copyright holders by AI products that could “flood the market with endless amounts of images, songs, articles, books, and more”.

“People can prompt generative AI models to produce these outputs using a tiny fraction of the time and creativity that would otherwise be required,” Chhabria added. He warned AI could “dramatically undermine the incentive for human beings to create things the old-fashioned way”.

Meta and legal representatives for the authors did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

New York City and other parts of the US are experiencing a punishing heat wave.

Kena Betancur/AFP via Getty Images

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Kena Betancur/AFP via Getty Images

New York City and other parts of the US are experiencing a punishing heat wave.

Kena Betancur/AFP via Getty Images

Tens of millions of people across the US are currently under a heat advisory. And the extreme heat isn’t just affecting people.

You may have seen videos online of the heat causing asphalt roads to buckle. It is impacting rail travel too. Amtrak has been running some trains more slowly, as have the public transit systems of Washington and Philadelphia.

Mikhail Chester, an engineering professor at Arizona State University, talks through the intersection of extreme heat and transportation.

And NPR’s Julia Simon shares advice on how people can keep themselves cool.

For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

This episode was produced by Jeffrey Pierre, Mia Venkat, and Connor Donevan. It was edited by Tinbete Ermyas, Sadie Babits and Neela Banerjee. Additional reporting from Adam Bearne.

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Zohran Mamdani, the leftwing Democrat feared by Wall Street, is on course to win the party’s mayoral primary for New York City, sending shockwaves across US politics.

Mamdani, a democratic socialist who has called for higher taxes on the rich and assailed US support for Israel in Gaza, stunned Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of New York state, in the Democratic primary race on Tuesday.

His success will reverberate across Wall Street and among the billionaire donors, including hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who backed his rival. It will also intensify the debate among Democrats as they seek a convincing political strategy to take on Donald Trump.

“Tonight, we made history,” Mamdani told hundreds of jubilant supporters in Queens on Tuesday night. “I will be your Democratic nominee for the mayor of New York City.

“When we no longer believe in our democracy, it only becomes easier for people like Donald Trump to convince us of his worth, for billionaires to convince us that they must always lead,” he said.

New York leans towards Democrats, and Mamdani’s victory gives the 33-year-old a major advantage in the election later this year to replace Eric Adams as the city’s mayor — one of the most powerful positions in US domestic politics.

Cuomo conceded defeat late on Tuesday in a contest that is widely seen as a referendum on the future of the party.

“Tonight was not our night, tonight. It was Assemblyman Mamdani’s night,” Cuomo told supporters at a post-election party, adding that he had called Mamdani to congratulate him.

Unofficial results on Tuesday night showed Mamdani with a seven-point lead over Cuomo, with more than 90 per cent of the vote counted.

The final result will depend on the tally in the city’s ranked-choice system, which allows people to pick up to five candidates in order of preference. The winner will be officially declared on July 1, at the earliest, after all other candidates’ votes have been reallocated.

Following Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris in last year’s presidential election, the Democrats have been riven between a progressive wing exemplified by New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and moderates such as Pennsylvania US Senator John Fetterman, who has praised Trump.

Mamdani ran his campaign on a pledge to make life more affordable for New Yorkers, whose cost of living has soared since the Covid-19 pandemic. If elected, he says he will raise taxes on the rich to fund free buses and childcare, as well as city-owned grocery stores.

The progressive candidate tapped into a groundswell of support among younger voters — an electoral strategy that will be studied by Democrats nationally as they try to win back youthful voters who backed Trump in November.

“In the words of Nelson Mandela: it always seems impossible until it’s done,” Mamdani said on X following the result.

Ocasio-Cortez, who has tapped into a similar voter base, congratulated Mamdani on Tuesday night, saying in a social media post, “billionaires and lobbyists poured millions against you and our public finance system. And you won.”

Cuomo, a fixture of New York state politics for more than four decades, was long seen as the frontrunner. But the centrist found himself fighting an increasingly serious challenge from the upstart Mamdani, who has a huge following on social media.

After resigning as governor four years ago amid accusations of sexual harassment, which he denies, Cuomo entered the mayoral race in March.

Cuomo committed to restoring the Democratic party’s appeal among working class voters, promising to hire more police officers, improve safety on the subway and remove red tape to build more affordable housing.

His campaign was built on the thesis that the Democratic party had been “hijacked”, and that it “doesn’t fight for working people anymore”.

Cuomo’s campaign enjoyed a big fundraising advantage over rivals in the final weeks of the race, buoyed by large contributions, including from former mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Combined, outside fundraising groups spent more than $20mn. Mamdani’s campaign relied on small contributions, with more than 21,000 donors, roughly 75 per cent of whom gave less than $100.

Eric Adams, the incumbent mayor, will run in the November general election as an independent. His approval rating stands at just 20 per cent after he was indicted last year on charges of bribery and fraud in a case that was later dismissed.