Bestselling author Richard Osman says he will ‘take on Meta’ to fight against AI copyright infringement.
The television presenter hit back at the tech giant as it was revealed the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp has used millions of pirated books to develop its AI systems.
Meta used a searchable database of 7.5 million books and 81 million research papers.
The data set, called Library Genesis, is full of pirated material, and all of it has been used to develop AI systems by Meta.
The Atlantic magazine, which published the searchable database, says court documents show that Meta staff discussed licensing books and research papers lawfully but instead chose to use or ‘scrape’ stolen work because it was faster and cheaper.
Osman, 54, said: ‘Copyright law is not complicated at all. If you want to use an author’s work, you need to ask for permission.
‘If you use it without permission, you’re breaking the law. It’s so simple. It’ll be incredibly difficult for us, and for other affected industries, to take on Meta, but we’ll have a good go.’
The Society of Authors said: ‘As a matter of urgency, Meta needs to compensate the rights-holders of all the works it has been exploiting.’
Chief executive Anna Ganley added: ‘Rather than ask permission and pay for these copyright-protected materials, AI companies are knowingly choosing to steal them in the race to dominate the market.
‘This is shocking behaviour by big tech that is being enabled by governments who are not intervening to strengthen and uphold current copyright protections.’
Senior figures from the worlds of music, media and film have backed a major Daily Mail campaign to protect Britain’s creative industries from the threat of AI.
The Labour Government is proposing to change laws so tech giants can use any online material to improve their AI models – without respecting copyright laws that ensure its creators get paid.
Instead, creators would have to opt out of having their work exploited.