Dutch writers, journalists demand that Meta stop using their work to train its AI
The associations representing Dutch writers, journalists, and translators have issued an injunction to Meta on Friday, demanding that the company behind Facebook and Instagram stop using their work to train its AI models. If Meta doesn’t respond, the Dutch Association of Journalists (NVJ), the Authors’ Union, and copyright organization Lira will consider a lawsuit, they told the Financieele Dagblad.
A case against Meta in the United States established that Meta uses shadow libraries - illegal online collections of millions of books, like LibGen and Anna’s Archive - to train its AI language model, Lama. These are also known to contain Dutch-language material, prompting the injunction by the writers’ representatives.
They ultimately hope to agree on a collective compensation scheme with Meta and other tech companies.
“Without our work, there would be no AI,” Thomas Bruning of the NVJ told FD. “Fair compensation is desperately needed to allow journalists, writers, and translators to continue doing their work.”
“We’re not against AI models,” Hanneke Verschuur of Lira told the newspaper. “But it can’t be right for companies that are expected to earn billions to do so while simultaneously undermining the economic and creative position of their creators.”
Writers must be compensated if you use their work. “For that, we first need transparency. We want to know exactly what has been used and what the underlying revenue models are.” Once they have that data, they can figure out fair compensation.
There have been many copyright lawsuits against AI companies since ChatGPT launched at the end of 2022. Their outcomes have been inconclusive. Last year, Meta won a U.S. lawsuit when a court ruled that its use of copyrighted work for AI training was justified in the specific case treated. In the Meta case, the judge explicitly said that in most cases, authors with a more substantiated claim for market damage would win.
