PARIS (Reuters) – France’s main publishing and authors’ associations have filed a lawsuit towards U.S. tech large Meta for allegedly utilizing copyright-protected content material on an enormous scale with out authorisation to coach its synthetic intelligence (AI) methods.
Representatives for Meta didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
The Nationwide Publishing Union (SNE), the main skilled publishing affiliation, the Nationwide Union of Authors and Composers (SNAC) and the Society of Males of Letters (SGDL), which defend the pursuits of authors, informed a press convention on Wednesday that they had filed a grievance towards Meta earlier this week in a Paris courtroom for alleged copyright infringement and financial “parasitism”.
The three associations imagine that Meta, which owns the Fb, Instagram and WhatsApp social networks, was illegally utilizing copyrighted content material to coach its AI fashions.
“We’re witnessing monumental looting,” stated Maia Bensimon, basic delegate of SNAC.
“It is a bit of a David versus Goliath battle,” SNE Director Common Renaud Lefebvre stated. “It is a process that serves for example,” he added.
That is the primary such motion towards an AI large in France however there’s a wave of lawsuits notably in the USA towards Meta and different tech corporations by authors, visible artists, music publishers and different copyright homeowners over the info used to coach their generative AI methods.
In the USA, Meta is notably the goal of a lawsuit filed in 2023 by American actress and creator Sarah Silverman and different authors. The plaintiffs argue that Meta misused their books to coach its massive language mannequin Llama.
American novelist Christopher Farnsworth filed an identical lawsuit towards Meta in October 2024.
OpenAI, the corporate behind the AI software ChatGPT, additionally faces a collection of comparable lawsuits in the USA, Canada, and India.
(Reporting by Florence Loeve, Writing by Dominique Vidalon; Enhancing by Angus MacSwan)