Kevin Winters

Belfast firm KRW LAW has issued pre-action correspondence to Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd on behalf of author Richard O’Rawe, who alleges serious and ongoing breaches of his copyright and data protection rights.

Solicitor Kevin Winters said it could ultimately see “one of the smallest jurisdictions in Europe host what will be a behemoth of legal battles”.

A group of Irish writers — including playwright Marie Jones and journalists Trevor Birney, Martin Dillon and Ed Moloney — have publicly backed Mr O’Rawe’s decision to take legal action.

The central allegation is that Meta used LibGen, a controversial online library which provides free access to millions of copyrighted texts, to train its Llama AI model.

Internal Meta documents released last month as part of a separate lawsuit in the US reveal employees’ extensive discussions about using LibGen for that purpose.

“These densely complex legal issues are already the subject of litigation in the American courts,” Mr Winters said.

“There is clear evidence that elements of the development of Meta’s AI language models took place in Ireland and the UK as well.

“Over the years, the High Court in Belfast has proven to be an adept and far-sighted forum to service some really challenging, precedent-setting legal action ranging from Troubles-related, historic abuse and human rights-based legal agitation generally, together with defamation and social media litigation specifically.

“It’s now time to take a stand here and engage the insidious AI encroachment into writers hard earned work product.”

He added: “I think it’s fascinating to see one of the smallest jurisdictions in Europe host what will be a behemoth of legal battles. It’s truly of David and Goliath proportions.

“I commend this cohort of Irish writers and dramatists in taking such a courageous stance to try and preserve the integrity and independence of their artistic craft.

“From time immemorial, human theft of writers’ publications has always amounted to breach of copyright. Equally today it’s only but right that non-human misappropriation of writers’ work product should be subject to the highest judicial scrutiny.

“To that end, we are also seeking an immediate injunction to halt what is really ongoing AI artistic larceny.”

Peter Girvan BL has been instructed by KRW LAW in the case.