Roadkill
Meta's AI model used my books without permission—search to see if your work is impacted!
I write a regular newsletter in my head but it doesn’t always make it on to the page. Here’s an attempt to reverse that trend.
The Atlantic magazine launched an investigation into Meta’s AI model, Llama3 (article paywalled). They discovered that Meta has stolen millions of copyright-protected books via a pirate site called Library Genesis (read about LibGen on Wikipedia). The Atlantic created a search tool for authors (not paywalled) to see which of their books have been used by Meta, without permission, to train the LLM (large language model). My search brought up fourteen books and papers I’ve written: nine of my novels, one academic book, two anthologies I edited, and two articles.
A taster from the article:
Court documents released last night show that the senior manager felt it was “really important for [Meta] to get books ASAP,” as “books are actually more important than web data.
Books are more important than web data.
If you’re a writer, search for your name, and then follow the advice given by the always excellent The Society of Authors here in the UK, or your equivalent in your country. I promise it will make you feel a bit less like roadkill.
In the meantime, I am still attempting to understand Large Language Models and, more interestingly, Small Language Models, and how these tools might actually help writers. This might be pointless given the overall roadkill situation. Still, I attended a focus group on AI and the Novel, and a session on AI Impacts run by Careful Industries, both of which were very interesting and useful.
Over at Bath Spa University, we’re hosting the last in our second series of webinars on AI and Writing on 2 April - this is a free online session if you’d like to join us. This time it’s on AI and Screenwriting and it’s at 12 noon UK time.
Here’s what I’ve been reading:
Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams: the book about Facebook. What a read! It’s the kind of book that makes you look up from the page in order to find someone to exclaim WTF?! at. It starts with a shark attack and ends with Zuckerberg selling his soul in order to get Facebook into China, with a side order of Facebook-supported genocide and a strong dose of soul-crushing greed. Despite all this, the book is surprisingly funny and entertaining. No wonder Facebook hates it. Buy it before they ban it.
The Anamoly by Herve Le Tellier - I went to Paris and wanted to read a new french novel that wasn’t auto-fiction. Again, terrific, a kind of high-concept global thriller, another unputdownable read.
I hope the weather is treating you well, wherever you live on this planet. Happy Monday!
Yours - Kate