The Irish Writers Union is increasingly concerned about the impact of rapidly expanding generative artificial intelligence large language models such as GPT, Meta, StableLM and BERT on the livelihoods and incomes of its members. The Irish Writers Union welcomes the action of the Irish Data Protection Commission, which caused Meta to pause its plan to use all social media posts, texts and images to train its AI model without paying and accrediting any of the originators of the content. This was due to begin on June 26th, 2024.

Without legal regulation, generative technologies accelerate and enable the expansion of exploitation, legitimisation of copyright infringement, information and communication distortion, royalty fraud and collective licensing remuneration fraud.

The Irish Writers Union is currently working with the European Writers Council to examine how the AI Act passed by the European Council in May 2024 will be applied in Irish law to ensure that writers are protected, have opt-outs and will be properly compensated for any use of their material by technology companies’ generative AI models.