Authors around the world are speaking out against the use of their works without their permission by Meta, the company that owns Facebook and WhatsApp.
An investigation by the magazine, The Atlantic, found that Meta had used pirated books and academic papers from the site LibGen to help train its AI, known as Llama. Llama is a large language model, similar to ChatGPT.
According to the BBC, author groups from the UK and around the world are now looking to organise campaigns to pressure governments to take action.
Abie Longstaff, spokesperson for Society of Authors, a union representing writers, illustrators, and translators, is quoted as saying: “Large language models work by prediction, they work by looking at patterns. They want our voice, they want our expression, they want our style. So you can as a normal person go onto one of these sites and say ‘please can you write me a book in the style of Abie Longstaff’ and they’ll write it in my style, in my voice.”
She said authors wanted compensation as Meta would be making money using these works without permission.