Fife crime author Marion Todd fears for career after AI 'theft'
A best-selling Fife crime author fears losing her career 'at a stroke' following the 'theft' of work by a global tech giant.
All nine of Marion Todd's novels were included in a dataset used to train Meta's new AI model, Llama 3.
The former lecturer and piano tutor's books centre on fictional detective Clare Mackay, who is based at St Andrews police station.
They are among more than seven million copyrighted works downloaded without permission.
And Marion has added her voice to those of around 150 other authors calling for their removal.
They fear AI models, trained on their books, could soon begin producing work replicating their style.
Marion said: 'If it becomes very skilled, it could finish my career at a stroke.'
The Wormit author's concerns echo those of Angus crime author Ed James. and other best-selling writers.
Well-known musicians, including Annie Lennox, Kate Bush and Blur frontman Damon Albarn, are also protesting the use of their work.
Originally from Dundee, Marion Todd has just completed her 10th book, which is now with her publisher.
It takes her between six and nine months to produce each book in her series.
However, she is concerned Meta will eventually be able to do it at the touch of a button.
She said: 'My concern is it would then be possible for Meta to say 'give me 100 Marion Todd books'.
'They wouldn't be very good to start with, but the more they're fed and the more they do it, the better they'll get.'
All of the affected works were taken from the 'Lib Gen dataset', one of the largest collections of pirated books in the world.
Marion says book piracy has been around for a long time and is impossible to stop.
'It's whack-a-mole, to be honest,' she said.
'You ask one to take it down and another one pops up.
'But crime author fans are voracious and the idea that my books could be replicated hundreds of times over is not good.'
The Society of Authors held a protest outside Meta's UK headquarters in London last month.
It has now written to Meta demanding compensation for affected writers.
'I'm fully behind the action being taken by the Society of Authors,' said Marion.
'I would also like to see some protection coming out from the Government in the form of licensing model.'
Last year, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the use of open source AI, such as Llama 3, is progress and will be good for the world.
He added: 'Since the models are open, anyone is capable of testing for themselves as well.
'We must keep in mind that these models are trained by information that's already on the internet, so the starting point when considering harm should be whether a model can facilitate more harm than information that can quickly be retrieved from Google or other search results.'
However, Marion said: 'For creativity, it's not progress.'
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