REPORTS OF WHOLESALE COPYRIGHT THEFT BY META
Publishing Ireland condemns Meta’s alleged use of pirated versions of millions of copyright- protected works in order to train its AI model, Llama 3. This was highlighted in The Atlantic on March 20, 2025 under the headline ‘The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated- Books Problem’.
The Atlantic alleges that Meta decided that seeking permission and paying for the content (the pirated database contains 7.5 million books and 81 million research papers) would be too time-consuming and costly.
The works of nearly all Irish writers are contained in this database. This has profound implications for Irish authors, publishers and the wider creative community, who, like everyone depend on compensation for their work. If true, their work has been stolen. Copyright theft is theft.
Publishing Ireland calls upon the Irish Government and the EU to uphold copyright law and hold Meta to account.
To support the Irish Writers Union’s petition on this issue, please click here.
