About 100 British writers today marched in front of London’s headquarters of the American Meta technology giant, which they accuse of “stealing” their works to train artificial intelligence models.

“Meta, Meta, book thieves!“, The protesters shouted by holding placards with slogans against the head of the US company Mark Zakeberg.

They are concerned about the use accused of making the meta of the Libgen online library, which aims to freely access academic knowledge and contains more than 7.5 million books and scientific articles.

In a lawsuit against Meta, which was launched by writers in the US, the company’s internal documents suggest that Mark Zuckerberg approved the appeal to “Libgen”, according to US media reports.

The Atlantic Magazine recently published a database of all available titles in “Libgen”.

“We respect the intellectual property rights of third parties and we believe that the use of our information to create models is in line with applicable legislation“, A Meta spokesman said in The Guardian.

But in front of the company’s headquarters in London, Ei Ji West, author of novels, said he felt “disgusted and that they had exploited him” when he discovered that his book “The Spirit Engineer” was in the database.

“Seeing my work (…) used to allow billionaires of technology to make even more money without my permission is completely disgusting“, He said in a statement to the French News Agency (AFP).

“They took my books and fed a technology designed specifically to destroy me“, He underlined.

Ei Jay West attempted to enter the Meta headquarters in order to leave a letter signed by many writers, including Kate Moss and Richard Ozman, but the doors were locked.

He now calls on the government to intervene in front of ‘Greater attack on history at the expense of British copyright“

Artist and writer Sophie Parkin, 63, estimates that the situation is led to an “existential change”, wondering “What is the most interesting to write?“

“They do not create anything, they simply steal our words to make money“He added, appealing to the Kir Starmer government to react.