More Authors Sue ChatGPT Maker OpenAI for Copyright Infringement Regarding AI Training
A number of US authors, including Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon, have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in federal court in San Francisco, alleging that the Microsoft-backed program improperly used their writing to train ChatGPT, its well-liked chatbot powered by artificial intelligence.
In their lawsuit filed on Friday, Chabon, playwright David Henry Hwang, and writers Matthew Klam, Rachel Louise Snyder, and Ayelet Waldman claimed that OpenAI had stolen their works without their consent in order to train ChatGPT to respond to human text prompts.
Inquiries concerning the litigation were forwarded to the writers’ attorneys by Chabon’s reps. On Monday, inquiries for comments were not immediately answered by those attorneys or OpenAI representatives. The lawsuit against Microsoft-backed OpenAI is at least the third copyright infringement class action that authors have proposed.
Copyright holders have also filed lawsuits against businesses, including Microsoft, Meta Platforms, and Stability AI, for using their work in AI training.
The argument put out by OpenAI and other businesses is that copyrighted content taken from the internet is fairly used in AI training.
When ChatGPT reached 100 million monthly active users in January of this year, it was the fastest-growing consumer application in history. However, ChatGPT was eventually replaced by Meta’s Threads app. The latest San Francisco complaint stated that the “best examples of high-quality, long-form writing” are books, plays, and essays, which are especially helpful for ChatGPT’s training.
The authors contend that ChatGPT can accurately describe their works and produce language that imitates their writing styles, but claim that their content was included in the training dataset without their consent.
The lawsuit demanded “unlawful and unfair business practices” by OpenAI be stopped as well as an injunction for specific monetary damages.
