FranceMajor publishers and writers' associations are interested in Meta filed a lawsuit alleging Meta's unauthorized mass use of copyrighted content to train its AI Models.
The French National Publishing Union (SNE), the National Union of Authors and Composers (SNAC), and the Société des Grands Littéraires pour la Défense des Droits de l'Homme (SGDL), which defends the interests of authors, said in a press release on Wednesday that they had filed a lawsuit against Meta.Allegations of copyright infringement and economic "parasitism". The three associations argue that Meta, the parent company of social networks like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, illegally used copyrighted content to train its AI models.
"We are witnessing a massive theft."Maia Bensimon, SNAC's General Delegate, and Renaud Lefebvre, Director General of SNE, likened the lawsuit to a "David and Goliath battle" and described it as an exemplary legal proceeding.
1AI notes that this is the first time such a lawsuit has been filed against an AI giant in France. In the U.S., however, tech companies such as Meta have faced a wave of lawsuits from authors, visual artists, music publishers, and other copyright holders over the data they use to train their generative AI systems.
In the United States, Meta is a defendant in several lawsuits. in 2023, American actress and author Sarah Silverman and other writers filed a lawsuit against Meta, alleging that it misused their books to train its large-scale language model, Llama. in October 2024, American novelist Christopher Farnsworth filed a similar lawsuit against Meta. In October 2024, American novelist Christopher Farnsworth filed a similar lawsuit against Meta.
In addition, OpenAI, the AI tools company that developed ChatGPT, is facing a similar series of lawsuits in the U.S., Canada and India.
