Mark Zuckerberg is facing a lawsuit against Sarah Silverman and other authors in an AI copyright case

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be ousted as part of a lawsuit filed by authors including comedian Sarah Silverman, who accuse the company of copyright infringement to train its artificial intelligence technology.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Hixson on Tuesday rejected Meta’s bid to block Zuckerberg’s ouster, saying there is sufficient evidence to show he is the “key decision maker” for the company’s AI platforms.

Meta had argued that Zuckerberg does not have unique knowledge of the company’s AI activities and that the same information could be gleaned from statements with other employees.

The authors provided “evidence of his specific involvement in the company’s AI initiatives,” as well as his “direct oversight of Meta’s AI products,” Hixson wrote in a ruling Tuesday.

The class action lawsuit was filed last year in California federal court. The authors accuse Meta of illegally downloading digital copies of their books and using them – without permission or compensation – to train its AI platforms.

Also this week, prominent attorney David Boies joined the case on behalf of Silverman and the group of other plaintiffs, including writer Ta-Nehisi Coates and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.

Boies is best known for his representation of Al Gore in the disputed 2000 election against George W. Bush.

The case against Meta is part of a series of similar lawsuits in San Francisco and New York against other AI chatbot developers, including Anthropic, Microsoft and ChatGPT maker OpenAI.