Liam Quaide (Cork East, Social Democrats)
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352. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if his attention has been drawn to reports of copyright infringements (details supplied); the steps his Department are taking to protect Irish authors and their copyrighted material from tech companies using pirated material to train their AI; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [15420/25]

Liam Quaide (Cork East, Social Democrats)
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356. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if his attention has been drawn to reports of copyright infringements (details supplied); the steps his Department are taking to protect Irish authors and their copyrighted material from tech companies using pirated material to train their AI; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [15425/25]

Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein)
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357. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the action that will be taken to protect Irish authors and their copyrighted material in the face of both piracy and the use of pirated material by a company (details supplied) to train its GenAI protocols (details supplied).; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [15472/25]

Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 352, 356 and 357 together.

I fully recognise concerns raised by Irish authors and their representative bodies regarding the use of work by a Tech company in training generative AI models without author consent.

I understand that a legal challenge by authors against a company is ongoing in the US District Court of Northern California in relation to its use of LibGen, a pirated database of copyrighted material, to train its large language model, Llama. This database may include works by Irish authors. The matter is before the courts so the outcome of this legal challenge will not be known for some time.

In Ireland, the legal landscape concerning the use of copyrighted works for AI training involves several considerations. The Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000 (as amended) provides robust protection for copyrighted works. As an EU Member State, Ireland has implemented the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, transposed by S.I. No. 567/2021, which introduced a Text and Data Mining (TDM) exception that allows commercial companies to use copyrighted material under certain conditions unless rightsholders explicitly opt out. This exception requires works to be lawfully accessible.