The authors taking up Mark Zuckerberg – podcast | Books

Earlier this month, a bunch of protesters gathered outdoors the London headquarters of Meta, the dad or mum firm of Fb, Instagram and WhatsApp. They had been demonstrating over the corporate’s use of thousands and thousands of pirated books and analysis papers to feed their household of generative AI fashions, generally known as Llama.

AJ West is a bestselling creator of historic fiction and an organiser of the protest. He tells Helen Pidd that he was devastated to find his books could have been used on this means, and he warns that if the UK authorities doesn’t step in to guard writers’ copyright, the humanities will change into much more of a privilege of the wealthy.

“By no means within the historical past of British literature has there been such a towering, brazen try on British copyright” – AJ West.

Ella Creamer, a books reporter on the Guardian, explains {that a} rising variety of authors within the US have filed lawsuits towards Meta claiming their copyright has been infringed and that their livelihoods could be underneath risk. She discusses the best way Meta has tried to justify its actions by claiming honest use and presenting it as a type of innovation that can in the end serve society, regardless of a cache of emails being launched that reveal the combined emotions of Meta workers.

The author and campaigner Kate Mosse outlines to Helen simply how a lot work goes into writing a novel and the way the UK authorities could be unwise to danger the way forward for the inventive industries, regardless of her perception that really inventive writing might by no means get replaced by AI.

Assist the Guardian at this time: theguardian.com/todayinfocuspod