PARIS, March 12 (Reuters) - France's leading publishing

and authors' associations have filed a lawsuit against U.S. tech

giant Meta for allegedly using copyright-protected

content on a massive scale without authorisation to train its

artificial intelligence (AI) systems.

Representatives for Meta did not immediately respond to a

request for comment.

The National Publishing Union (SNE), the leading

professional publishing association, the National Union of

Authors and Composers (SNAC) and the Society of Men of Letters

(SGDL), which defend the interests of authors, told a press

conference on Wednesday they had filed a complaint against Meta

earlier this week in a Paris court for alleged copyright

infringement and economic "parasitism".

The three associations believe that Meta, which owns the

Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp social networks, was illegally

using copyrighted content to train its AI models.

"We are witnessing monumental looting," said Maia Bensimon,

general delegate of SNAC.

"It's a bit of a David versus Goliath battle," SNE Director

General Renaud Lefebvre said. "It's a procedure that serves as

an example," he added.

This is the first such action against an AI giant in France

but there is a wave of lawsuits notably in the United States

against Meta and other tech companies by authors, visual

artists, music publishers and other copyright owners over the

data used to train their generative AI systems.

In the United States, Meta is notably the target of a

lawsuit filed in 2023 by American actress and author Sarah

Silverman and other authors. The plaintiffs argue that Meta

misused their books to train its large language model Llama.

American novelist Christopher Farnsworth filed a similar

lawsuit against Meta in October 2024.

OpenAI, the company behind the AI tool ChatGPT, also faces a

series of similar lawsuits in the United States, Canada, and

India.