Jan 9 (Reuters) - Meta Platforms ( META ) used pirated

versions of copyrighted books to train its artificial

intelligence systems with approval from its CEO Mark Zuckerberg,

a group of authors alleged in newly disclosed court papers.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, comedian Sarah Silverman and other authors

suing Meta for copyright infringement made the accusations in

filings made public on Wednesday in California federal court.

They said internal documents produced by Meta during the

discovery process showed the company knew the works were

pirated.

Spokespeople for Meta did not immediately respond to a

request for comment.

The authors sued Meta in 2023, arguing that the tech giant

misused their books to train its large language model Llama.

The case is one of several alleging that copyrighted works

by authors, artists and others were used to develop AI products

without permission. Defendants have argued that they made fair

use of copyrighted material.

The authors asked the court on Wednesday for permission to

file an updated complaint. They said new evidence showed Meta

used the AI training dataset LibGen, which allegedly includes

millions of pirated works, and distributed it through

peer-to-peer torrents.

They said internal Meta communications showed Zuckerberg

"approved Meta's use of the LibGen dataset notwithstanding

concerns within Meta's AI executive team (and others at Meta)

that LibGen is 'a dataset we know to be pirated.'"

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria last year dismissed

claims that text generated by Meta's chatbots infringed the

authors' copyrights and that Meta unlawfully stripped their

books' copyright management information (CMI).

The writers argued Wednesday that the evidence bolstered

their infringement claims and justified reviving their CMI claim

and adding a new computer fraud claim.

Chhabria said during a hearing on Thursday that he would

allow the writers to file an amended complaint but expressed

skepticism about the merits of the fraud and CMI claims.