The Syndicat national de l'édition (SNE), the Société des Gens de Lettres (SGDL) and the Syndicat national des auteurs et des compositeurs (SNAC) have taken legal action against Meta before the 3rd chamber of the Paris Court of Justice for the massive use of copyrighted works to train its generative artificial intelligence model., without authorisation of authors and publishers.
"Given that we have noted the presence of numerous works published by members of the Syndicat national de l'édition in the data sets used by Meta, we are today referring the matter to the judge to have the copyright infringement, the parasitism, recognised. We wish, through this summons, to act on the basis of fundamental principles. The creation of an AI market cannot be conceived to the detriment of the cultural sector,’ says Vincent Montagne, president of the SNE.
This legal action takes place in the context of AI regulation in the EU: the AI Act has reiterated the need for companies publishing generative artificial intelligence solutions to respect copyright law and ensure transparency on the sources they have used to develop their foundation models. On the occasion of the Action Summit on Artificial Intelligence, 38 international organisations representing all creative and cultural sectors also published a Charter on Culture and Innovation to defend copyright and intellectual property in AI usages.
"Our action should seriously motivate AI developers to take Creation into account, to respect laws and, where appropriate, to propose compensation for the use of the works from which they draw their inspiration. This is essential to preserve a fragile ecosystem that owes its richness to editorial diversity,’ adds Christophe Hardy, president of the SGDL.
Finally, François Peyrony, president of the SNAC, states: ‘The objective of this unprecedented action in France, is also to pave the way for other similar actions in order to protect, if necessary, authors from the dangers of AI that plunders their works and cultural heritage for training and produces “fake books” that compete with real authored books.’
Complainants are calling for copyright to be respected and, in particular, for the complete removal from the data repositories of data created without authorisation and used to train GenAI.
Note: This lawsuit is the first of the kind in the EU against an Ai developer.
(Translation:party Deepl free version, partly human, based on the following press release:
Unis, auteurs et éditeurs assignent Meta pour imposer le respect du droit d’auteur aux développeurs d’outils d’intelligence artificielle générative - Syndicat national de l'édition