#DoTheWriteThing day of action

Following the The Atlantic’s article, which revealed that many UK authors have had their work taken without consent as part of the Library Genesis ‘LibGen’ dataset and used by Meta to train AI, we immediately issued advice to our members. You can read that advice here.

On 3 April 2025, the WGGB joined forces with the Society of Authors, ALCS and others to deliver a joint letter to Meta and make our voices heard. We encouraged our members to support the action on social media using the hashtag #DoTheWriteThing and #MakeItFair. Thanks to everyone who took part.

The Society of Authors have also launched an open letter to Lisa Nandy, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, which we are supporting. The letter demands that senior Meta executives appear before Parliament to provide a detailed response to the allegations and provide unequivocal assurances that they will respect the copyright of authors, not engage in unlawful conduct and will pay authors for all historic infringements.

You can sign the letter here

If you have not already done so you can also:

• Send a letter to AI companies telling them that they do not have the right to use your books. Doing this via the Authors Guild website will help show solidarity with the legal action they are taking (the template letter on the Authors Guild website was originally in response to the Books3 database but you can still use it)
• Write to you your MP and urge them to protect and strengthen writers’ copyright and introduce measures which will stop AI companies from being able to take work without permission or payment.
• You can also find out more about the WGGB’s AI campaign here