During a fiery Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) slammed Meta for its “willful” piracy of copyrighted material to train its artificial intelligence models. The hearing, chaired by Hawley, focused on the AI industry’s alleged mass exploitation of copyrighted works, featuring testimony from bestselling authors like David Baldacci and legal experts. Hawley didn’t hold back, accusing Meta of knowingly engaging in illegal activity despite repeated internal warnings.
“They knew exactly what they were doing,” Hawley declared. “They pirated these materials willfully.” He cited internal Meta communications where employees explicitly warned management about the legal consequences of using illegal downloads. One employee reportedly asked, “What is the probability of getting arrested for using torrents, illegal downloads, in the United States?” Another cautioned that downloading from illegal repositories would expose Meta to “legal ramifications.” Yet, according to Hawley, Meta’s leadership—including CEO Mark Zuckerberg—ignored these warnings and “bulldozed straight ahead.”
The hearing revealed shocking details about Meta’s alleged attempts to conceal its actions. “They tried to hide the fact that they were engaged in illegal download of pirated works,” Hawley said, noting that the company used non-company servers to avoid detection. Even more damning, “Meta trained its AI model to lie to users about what data it had been trained on.” Hawley, a former Missouri attorney general, didn’t mince words: “This is not aggressive business conduct—this is criminal conduct.”
Bestselling author David Baldacci delivered emotional testimony, describing how Meta’s AI reproduced his life’s work in seconds. “Every single one of my books was presented to me … in three seconds. It really felt like I had been robbed of everything of my entire adult life that I had worked on,” he said.
Hawley emphasized that Meta’s actions are not an isolated incident but part of a broader pattern among Big Tech giants. “Meta’s conduct is not an exception, this is the rule when it comes to what has happened in the AI space among these mega companies,” he stated. His office revealed that AI firms have used over 200 terabytes of copyrighted work without permission—a staggering theft of intellectual property.
Meanwhile, the liberal media continues to downplay Big Tech’s abuses, often painting conservatives like Hawley as alarmists. But this hearing proves what President Donald Trump has long warned about: unchecked tech monopolies are eroding American innovation and stealing from hardworking creators. While the Biden administration’s so-called “AI Czar” David Sacks argues for “fair use” exemptions—claiming “China is going to train on all the data regardless, so without fair use, the U.S. would lose the AI race”—this is nothing more than a weak excuse for corporate theft.
Here's what Zuckerberg doesn't want you to know: Meta is willfully pirating droves of copyrighted content to train its AI models
And then the company turns to its lawyers & lobbyists to get off scot-free. Meta doesn't care about the law – it cares about profit pic.twitter.com/aGApRy9aiE
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) July 16, 2025
President Trump, a staunch defender of American workers and creators, would never tolerate this kind of blatant theft. His administration took on Big Tech’s abuses head-on, and it’s time to return to that strong, America-first leadership.