Gerry Adams considers legal action against Meta over alleged use of his books to train AI

Former Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams is considering legal action against tech giant Meta, following claims that several of his books were used without permission to train the company’s artificial intelligence models.

Adams said Meta included at least seven of his works, and confirmed he has instructed solicitors to look into the matter. “Meta has used many of my books without my permission. I have placed the issue in the hands of my solicitor,” he said.

Sinn Féin said in a statement that the titles included are Gerry Adams' autobiography, Before the Dawn; a prison memoir, Cage Eleven; reflections on Northern Ireland’s peace process, Hope and History; and other memoirs, a cookbook, and a short story collection.

The books seem to have been taken from Library Genesis, better known as LibGen, an online shadow library containing more than 7.5 million pirated books and research papers. In a U.S. court filing made in January, a group of authors alleged that Meta approved the use of LibGen to train its generative AI system, LLaMA.

As reported by the BBC and RTÉ, other Irish authors affected include Sally Rooney, John Banville, Colm Toibin, Claire Keegan, Claire Allan, Prof Monica McWilliams, Michael Taylor, Jan Carson, Lynne Graham, Deric Henderson, Anna Burns, Glenn Patterson, and many others.

Following a recent Atlantic magazine investigation, many authors discovered their work had been included in a dataset published by LibGen.

Last week, a group of authors gathered in London to protest Meta’s actions. High-profile writers including Kate Mosse, Val McDermid, and Richard Osman signed an open letter addressed to Meta’s U.S. headquarters.

Richard Osman stated on social media: "Copyright law is not complicated at all. If you want to use an author's work you need to ask for permission.

"If you use it without permission you're breaking the law. It's so simple.

"It'll be incredibly difficult for us, and for other affected industries, to take on Meta, but we'll have a good go!"

A Meta spokesperson responded to the backlash, saying: "We respect third-party intellectual property rights and believe our use of information to train AI models is consistent with existing law."