Major publishing houses have filed a lawsuit accusing Meta and Mark Zuckerberg of enabling AI systems that copy protected writing and undermine sales.
The plaintiffs argue that Meta’s AI program poses a threat to the livelihoods of writers and publishers because the technology can be used to quickly produce AI-generated copycat books and to summarise the plot and themes of copyrighted books in such great detail that readers don’t have to buy them.. “These AI-generated books are already flooding the world’s largest book marketplace, Amazon, in volumes that materially displace human-authored works,” the complaint states.. The filing cites
several authors whose works the plaintiffs claim were used to train Llama, including V.E.. Schwab, N.K.. Jemisin, Lemony Snicket and Turow.. Some of the evidence cited in the complaint purportedly comes directly from Llama.. When asked to produce a travel guide in the style of the writer Becky Lomax, Llama rapidly produced “a convincing rendition of Lomax’s local insider voice,” the complaint says.. Then, when asked how it was able to reproduce Lomax’s style so
accurately, Llama allegedly replied, “While I don’t have personal interactions with Becky Lomax, I’ve been trained on a vast amount of text data, including her published works.” Llama is also able to summarise books in detail.. When asked to give a synopsis of Turow’s Presumed Innocent, Llama confirmed that it had “been trained on a digital version of the book, which allows me to access and analyse its content,” according to the complaint.