Writers on Thursday protested against Meta outside its London headquarters on allegations of using copyrighted literary works to train its AI models.

An estimated 100 authors participated in the protest, telling the US social media giant to keep its “hands” off their work. The company has already been allayed before courts by artists and writers over the same matter.

Meta is accused of “stealing” content

According to Barons, the protesters carried placards and chanted “Meta, Meta, book thieves” while they made their advance towards the Meta Building.

The protests come after an investigation by The Atlantic revealed that the company, founded by tech maverick Mark Zuckerberg, has been using the pirate library LibGen to train its AI assets.

Meta is alleged by The Atlantic to have used more than 7.5 million books and 81 million research papers to train its AI.

This revelation affirmed suspicions that had been born out of a US court case where several authors claimed that Zuckerberg and Meta executives knew that LibGen did not procure books properly from copyright holders, but still did not stop its use.

Now, incensed writers encircled the social media company’s offices in London to deliver a letter of discontent to the company and dispatched a similar version to the company’s office in the US.

On their placards, the protesting writers had a strong message for Meta.

“I’d write a sign but you’d steal it.”

Protesting writers.

Other placards were written “get the Zuck off our books,” in reference to the company’s founder and chief executive officer, Zuckerberg.

Writers feel abused

One of the protesting artists was AJ West, who penned “The Spirit Engineer.” West told AFP that he felt “abused and disgusted” when he discovered his work on the database.

West tried to deliver a letter to Meta, which was signed by leading authors like Kate Mosse and Richard Osman, but found the company’s doors locked.

“It’s very telling that a company that saw fit to steal billions of words is now afraid of 500 words on one sheet of paper. It’s an insult piled upon insult.”

West.

He made a plea to the UK government to intervene, saying it was “reprehensible” that Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy had been silent about “the biggest attack on British Copyright history.”

“To have my work that took years to write, and that I poured my heart and soul into, used to make tech billionaires even more money, without my permission, is so disgusting,” said West.

Another artist and author, 63-year-old Sophie Parkin, said the situation was “a life-changer for everybody, because what’s the point of going on writing,” she said.

“They aren’t even creating anything, they are stealing our words and then making money out of it,” said Parking who turned up wearing a sign on her hat that read “AI pay authors.”

Writers vow to keep fighting while Meta defends its actions

The different writers were convened by the Society of Authors (SoA), a writer collective with 12,000 members, most of whom are aggrieved with the discovery.

“A book can take a year or longer to write. Meta has stolen books so that their AI can reproduce creative content, potentially putting these same authors out of business,” SOA chair, Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin told the Guardian.

Writers have made several attempts to engage the UK government to censure Meta.

In the run-up to today’s protests, prominent writers including Richard Osman, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Val McDermid wrote to Lisa Nandy seeking to have the matter heard in parliament.

Major publishers who have been the most affected by piracy have thrown their weight behind writers.

Penguin Random House UK CEO Tom Weldon said they believe in the cause being championed by the writers.

“We will vigorously defend the intellectual property that belongs to our authors and artists, and we stand in support of the Society of Authors’ day of action to protest against Meta’s apparent disregard of copyright-protected works.”

Weldon.

“We firmly believe that the unauthorized ingestion of copyrighted content to train generative AI models is a copyright infringement and we share the deep frustration and concern of our authors,” said Weldon.

Despite the protests, Meta denied any wrongdoing, saying they respect intellectual property.

“We respect third-party intellectual property rights and believe our use of information to train AI models is consistent with existing law,” the company said through a spokesperson.

As a company, they believe that their contribution to AI will aid intelligence.

This past week has been tumultuous for Meta in Europe. Turkish authorities fined the company substantial amounts of money after the company refused to obey an order to suspend Facebook and Instagram services during a protest.

The global book market is struggling, at a time the AI market is blossoming, and writers feel like part of the growth is coming at their expense.

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