What if ChatGPT had learned to write from “Game of Thrones”? The author of the saga with resounding worldwide success, George RR Martin, and other writers have launched lawsuits against the Californian start-up OpenAI in a federal court in New York.
They accuse the creators of ChatGPT of having used their works to create their generative AI in disregard of their copyrights, using their books “without permission” to train the language model of this software capable of producing all kinds of texts upon simple request in everyday language.
“At the heart of these algorithms is systematic theft on a large scale,” assert the lawyers. Among the plaintiffs in this class action is an organization that represents authors, the “Authors Guild” and several writers, including George RR Martin and the novelist John Grisham, author of “The Firm” or “The Pelican Affair “.
Produce texts instead of paying authors
Language models “endanger the ability of fiction writers to make a living, as they allow anyone to automatically and freely (or very cheaply) generate text for which they would otherwise have to pay authors,” the lawyers argue in Tuesday’s complaint.
They also argue that generative AI tools can be used to produce derivative content, which imitates the style of writers. “In an unfair and perverse manner, the deliberate copying of the work of the plaintiffs therefore transforms their works into engines of their own destruction,” asserts the complaint.
The guild and authors are seeking a ban on the use of copyrighted books to train language models “without express permission”, as well as damages. OpenAI has not yet commented on these complaints. The company needed mountains of text found online to train its language model, but never specified exactly which sites and writings were used.
Artists have already filed complaints
Propelled among the AI giants thanks to the success of ChatGPT at the end of last year, OpenAi is already the subject of other similar lawsuits, including an action by a group of computer engineers which also attacks Microsoft, its main investor, and the GitHub platform.
And artists filed suit in January against Stability AI, Midjourney and DeviantArt, whose programs were trained from numerous visual works on the Internet. In early September, Microsoft announced that it would provide legal protection to customers sued for copyright infringement on content generated with its generative AI tools.