Norwegian media sue Meta over plans to use their journalism for AI

Ten Norwegian media organizations have filed a lawsuit against Meta, alleging that the company's updated business account terms could jeopardize publishers' control over their content and enable it to be utilized in AI applications without consent. The 10 media groups claim that Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads, would be granted the authority to gather their articles, photos, and videos, even those behind paywalls, for the purpose of creating artificial intelligence products.

In late October, Meta announced its intention to roll out the changes on October 30th, but postponed the rollout following backlash from European publishers and antitrust authorities, now scheduled for November 20th. Critics argue that publishers are being forced into a binary decision: either permitting Meta to scrape their journalism, potentially for AI training, or losing their presence on Facebook and Instagram.

The Norwegian Media Businesses Association's head, Lene Eltvik Vindfeld, expressed concern that Meta may exploit this power to secure rights over journalistic content, stating that the changes could distort competition as Meta uses publishers' investments to develop competing AI services. The plaintiffs include prominent media entities such as NRK, Schibsted, Amedia, Polaris, Aller, and the Norwegian news agency NTB.

Earlier this year, over 340 news sites, including the Guardian, New York Times, and USA Today, had blocked web crawlers to prevent data collection for AI model training. In June, France's competition authority warned Meta about potential harm to the press due to its approach to copyright negotiations with news outlets.