Authors staged a protest outside Meta HQ at King’s Cross in response to reports that they used millions of published works without permission or payment to train their AI model.
The Society of Authors penned an open letter to Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy demanding the government summon Meta senior executives to appear before Parliament and answer the allegations, with nearly 50,000 supporting signatures currently.
Earlier this year, US court filings published from a 2023 lawsuit by writers including comedian Sarah Silverman allege the company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp breached copyright law by using pirated works to develop its AI software Llama3.
In March, The Atlantic published a tool to search the millions of seemingly pirated articles, journals, books, magazines and comics available on LibGen, the so-called ‘shadow library’ in question.
Meta denies the allegations.
AJ West, author and organiser of the protest, described the allegations and silence from government as an attack on British authors.
He said: “What we’re talking about, as creatives, is the theft of art.
“If we allow that to be stolen and be replicated by AI, which is just a copying machine, then there is no such thing as human creativity left.”
Watch the video below to see more of the protest and interviews with some of the outraged authors.
The Department of Culture, Media and Sport was contacted for comment.
Featured image by Oscar Herbert-Maynard
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