George RR Martin, the mind behind “Game of Thrones”, and other renowned writers, including John Grisham and Jodi Picoult, have joined forces to launch a lawsuit against OpenAI. They accuse the tech firm of copyright infringement, asserting that ChatGPT, OpenAI’s AI chatbot, was trained using their writings without consent, as detailed by Barrons.
Backed by The Authors Guild, a body safeguarding authors’ rights, the lawsuit filed in a New York federal court states that OpenAI’s language models jeopardize writers’ livelihoods. They enable text creation that mimics established writers, potentially devaluing their original works. The plaintiffs believe that OpenAI’s commercial products wouldn’t hold value without their copyrighted material.
Several similar lawsuits have been filed against OpenAI and other companies in the AI sector, alleging unauthorized use of copyrighted material. The Authors Guild and involved authors are demanding a prohibition on using copyrighted content in AI training without explicit approval and are seeking damages.
Despite various complaints following ChatGPT’s success, OpenAI hasn’t disclosed the specific sources used for its training. Moreover, OpenAI’s primary investor, Microsoft, recently pledged legal support for clients facing copyright-related lawsuits over its AI-generated content.