A group of Irish authors has presented a petition to the Department of Trade raising their concerns over the alleged use by Meta of their publications to train its AI model, Llama 3.
The petition has collected 1,500 signatures and was submitted to Minister of State with special responsibility for AI and digital transformation Niamh Smyth.
The authors have joined forces in a campaign organised by the Irish Writers Union - Aontas Scribhneoirí Éireann - to demand that Meta complys with Irish and European Union copyright laws in the training of its AI model.
The IWU said it "condemns" and will "resist any piracy of its members' works by Meta or any tech company which tries to use material without permission or compensation".
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The organisation has coordinated with publishers, screenwriters and poets to call on Ms Smyth to "hold Meta accountable" for its reported use of 7.5 million pirated books in the illegal 'LibGen’ library.
The library, called Library Genesis or LibGen for short, is described as a decades-old shadow library, full of material without copyright authorisation.
The campaign was launched by the IWU after searches online revealed that the work of prominent authors, including President Michael D Higgins, Joseph O'Connor and Anne Enright, appear in a LibGen database.
The reported use by Meta of this material was first highlighted by US magazine, The Atlantic.
Court documents unsealed last month in the US for a class-action lawsuit filed against Meta - by novelist Christopher Golden and comedian Sarah Silverman - gave details into their allegations of Meta’s use of copyright-protected works in order to train its AI model.
IWU Chair Conor McAnally said in a statement: "It is difficult enough to make a living as a writer without billionaires deciding it’s too inconvenient to pay for our work."
He added: "Meta claims to respect copyright and the law but the revelations in the Atlantic article on their use of the LibGen pirated library of 7.5 million books tells a different story."
The controversial issue of Meta using large quantities of copyright-protected texts to train its AI has been growing internationally, with writers becoming more vocal in their efforts to restrain the company.
The European Writers Council is promoting a campaign against Meta’s use of its members’ works to train its AI models.
"The Irish Writers Union will robustly defend our members, and their right to fair compensation for any use of their work," Mr McAnally said.
"We call on the Irish Government to support those writers whose work has been pirated and hold Meta to account," he added.
In a statement, issued last month, a Meta spokesperson said: "We respect third-party intellectual property rights and believe our use of information to train AI models is consistent with existing law."
Authors Audrey Magee and Conor Kostick express concerns over use of material to train Meta AI
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Audrey Magee, author of the Booker-longlisted The Colony, said she was shocked to discover her name in the 'LibGen' library.
"I was just at home on my laptop and I thought, 'I'll throw in my name', and up came all my work," she said.
"And not only my books, but some translations and also some of my journalism from maybe 20 years ago. It's quite a shocking thing to think that your work has been scraped, harvested and actually stolen by unknown people to be used in a way that you have no control over.
"It's a very shocking space for a writer. When you finish a book and you get to use the copyright sign, it's a really thrilling moment. The copyright means that you've created something unique, something new, something that nobody else has ever done before."
Author and historian Conor Kostick, who is also an advocacy officer at the IWU, said it would have a bigger impact than just on writing.
"It's a David and Goliath situation"
Speaking on the same programme, he said the consequences of Meta "being able to take this data extends far more than having an impact on Irish writing".
"All sorts of aspects of Irish life depend on the copyright environment - films, music, even pharmaceuticals," he added.
"Once you allow massive businesses to just take liberties with this content, you're really asking for a lot of trouble."
Ms Magee called on the Government to get behind their campaign and help writers "and not leave it up to an individual writer".
"We can't even take a class action here. It's a David and Goliath situation of a single writer going to court against Meta. That's a really terrifying space for anybody to even consider. I don't think most of us have such deep pockets that we could take on Meta," she said.
