George R.R. Martin and Other Authors Sue OpenAI
On Tuesday, George R.R. Martian, Jodi Picoult, and John Grisham with fourteen other authors filed a lawsuit against OpenAI for what they call “systematic theft on a mass scale.” According to a report by the Associated Press, the suit alleges harmful infringements.
A few months ago, authors pressed OpenAI to halt training their LLMs on what they claimed to be data from their works without permission. Now, it seems that a group of prominent authors are pressing against OpenAI’s training methods.
They’re claiming that the AI company is engaged in “flagrant and harmful infringements of plaintiffs’ registered copyrights.” They also called ChatGPT a “massive commercial enterprise” that is reliant upon “systematic theft on a mass scale.”
The suit was organized by the Authors Guild and was filed in federal court in New York. In a statement, the Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger said, “It is imperative that we stop this theft in its tracks or we will destroy our incredible literary culture, which feeds many other creative industries in the U.S.,”.
She went on, “Great books are generally written by those who spend their careers and, indeed, their lives, learning and perfecting their crafts. To preserve our literature, authors must have the ability to control if and how their works are used by generative AI.”
OpenAI released its statement about the lawsuit. First, they point out that tech derived from AI is a net benefit to authors, “the rights of writers and authors, and believe they should benefit from AI technology.”
It continues, “We’re having productive conversations with many creators around the world, including the Authors Guild, and have been working cooperatively to understand and discuss their concerns about AI. We’re optimistic we will continue to find mutually beneficial ways to work together to help people utilize new technology in a rich content ecosystem.”
This comes a little more than a month after The New York Times threatened their lawsuit against OpenAI; citing similar concerns about the company using data from their work to train its generative AI models.
But it’s not just OpenAI facing a bit of heat. Google is also facing a lawsuit that claims it is misusing data in training its LLMs. The issue of AI and the data used to train models aren’t the only concerns.
Another issue is whether it is possible to even copyright AI-generated work. One federal court has already said no, and this has sparred the U.S. Copyright Office to request public comment on the issue of AI-generated content.
Either way, until legislatures clear the air on what is permissible and what is not, lawsuits and other issues related to generated AI content and training data will continue.
Originally posted on OpenDataScience.com
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