A number of authors including Richard Osman, Val McDermid, Kate Mosse, Kazuo Ishiguro and Sarah Waters have signed an open letter from the Society of Authors (SoA) demanding that Meta be held to account by the UK government following allegations in the US that authors’ works have been used without permission or remuneration to train its artificial intelligence (AI) model.
The open letter comes after a story in the Atlantic under the headline “The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem” was published on March 20th 2025, detailing “a number of shocking allegations about the practices which were adopted by Meta at the time of the development of its AI model, Llama 3”.
A searchable database of more than 7.5 million books and 81 million research papers was published by the Atlantic as part of its report. This data set, called Library Genesis, or “LibGen” for short, is full of pirated material, all of which has been used to develop AI systems by tech-giant Meta.
The open letter, addressed to Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Lisa Nandy and Minister for Creative Industries, Arts and Tourism Chris Bryant, states: “The allegations have profound implications for UK authors (including writers, illustrators, translators, scriptwriters, etc.), and we are calling on you and the Labour government to take immediate, decisive action.”
It continues: “Since publication of the Atlantic article, authors across the UK have been angered by the discovery that their works appear in the ‘LibGen’ database. Authors are rightly concerned that their works have been used without their permission to train Llama 3 — a clear infringement of copyright law. Meta must be held accountable and the UK government must play its part.“
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