“Uncovering the Secret: Are Your Beloved Books Fueling the Next Generation of AI?”
Library Genesis is not without its detractors. It has been described as “a digital warehouse of stolen intellectual property, neatly stacked with pirated books, academic papers, and various works authors and publishers never approved.” The Authors Guild, a plaintiff in current litigation over LibGen, released “Meta’s Massive AI Training Book Heist: What Authors Need to Know” on March 20, 2025.
In separate court filings (California & New York), it is alleged that Meta Platforms, Inc. and other tech giants (Microsoft Corporation & OpenAI, LLC et al.) availed themselves of either LibGen’s massive archives or, as Open AI has admitted, that it has “trained” its LLMs on “large, publicly available datasets that include copyrighted works to train its Artificial Intelligence generative programs. Meta’s AI software program is known as LLaMA – Large Language Model Meta AI (Llama 3). Venerated authors such as John Grisham, Scott Turow, and David Baldacci have joined in the fray as plaintiffs in New York.
