ChatGPT parent company, OpenAI, is facing a class-action lawsuit alleging copyright infringement by two authors, Nicholas Basbanes and Nicholas Gage, claiming that OpenAI trained ChatGPT with their books without approval, making billions in the process.
Seeking redress, the authors are requesting the courts to halt OpenAI’s use of their works without permission and are seeking approximately $2.5 million in damages.
This lawsuit follows a similar legal action initiated four months ago by author of the A Song of Ice and Fire series, George R.R. Martin, and 16 other authors, including best seller, John Grisham and Jodi Picoult, who accused OpenAI of copyright infringement. The first hearing for that case took place in November, and a second hearing date is yet to be scheduled.
OpenAI’s legal isues don’t end there. Just two weeks ago, the New York Times also filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the company, asserting that OpenAI had copied and used millions of the Times’ copyrighted articles.
OpenAI has previously admitted to using copyrighted works to train its language models, prompting concerns about ownership of the content generated by AI services.
These legal challenges might be indicative of a broader trend as AI companies face increasing scrutiny over their usage of copyrighted materials. In 2023, Getty Images sued StabilityAI, the developer behind the image generation tool Stable Diffusion, over similar concerns.
In October of the same year, multiple music publishers, including Universal Music, filed lawsuits against Anthropic, the creator of Claude.ai, for the alleged distribution of copyrighted lyrics.
The ongoing lawsuits against OpenAI and other AI entities show the growing importance of addressing copyright concerns and establishing clear guidelines for the ethical and legal use of third-party content when developing AI technologies. It’s possible that these legal battles may set precedents that shape the future landscape of AI and intellectual property rights.
