Even Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro and Richard Osman are among the authors who have written an open letter to the British government, asking them to hold Meta accountable for copyright infringement.
There has long been an obligation under agreements that when a third party uses a writer's work, they should compensate us, says Val McDermid, according to The Guardian.
Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg is accused of having allowed the company to use a notorious "shadow library", "Libgen", with over 7.5 million books. The American magazine The Atlantic recently published a searchable database with the titles in Libgen, so that authors can see if their work has been used without permission to train Meta's AI models.
The letter, published by the trade union Society of Authors, demands that the government hold Meta accountable and that the company's executives provide assurances that they will respect copyright and pay authors whose work has been used.
A spokesperson from Meta said that the company has developed "incredible innovation, productivity, and creativity" and that fair use of copyrighted material is crucial for them. Meta disagrees with the allegations and writes that they "will vigorously defend ourselves to protect GenAI."
