George RR Martin and John Grisham, two well-known writers in the US, have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that the tech company violated their copyright when it used their work to train the ChatGPT system.
The popular HBO series Game of Thrones is based on Martin's epic novel A Song of Ice and Fire.
Lawsuit Against OpenAI
Artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT learn by analyzing vast amounts of data, much of which is obtained from the internet. In the complaint, it is alleged that the authors' works were improperly adapted to improve the intelligence of ChatGPT.
OpenAI said that it valued writers' rights, and added that they must also enjoy the benefits of AI.
Apart from Martin and Grisham, the lawsuit also names notable writers, including Jonathan Franzen, Jodi Picoult, and George Saunders.
The Authors Guild, a professional organization in the US, has filed suit in federal court in Manhattan, New York, on behalf of the writers mentioned in the suit. The suit said that OpenAI had committed "systematic theft on a mass scale."
According to BBC, the action follows a similar one filed by comedian Sarah Silverman in July and an open letter sent by authors Margaret Atwood and Philip Pullman in the same month demanding payment from AI firms for the use of their work without permission.
OpenAI said in a statement, "We're having productive conversations with many creators around the world, including the Authors Guild, and have been working co-operatively to understand and discuss their concerns about AI. We're optimistic we will continue to find mutually beneficial ways to work together," as reported by NBC Bay Area.
OpenAI, Microsoft, and the code hosting site GitHub are all being sued by a group of computer scientists who claim that these companies exploited their code to train an AI named Copilot without their consent. The outcomes of these legal actions are still pending.
AI as 'Job Killer'
The complaint contends that the LLM received unauthorized access to data from copyrighted publications because of its ability to produce accurate summaries of the texts. The case highlighted a bigger worry in the media sector that such technology is "displacing human-authored" materials.
City University reader-in-law Patrick Goold told BBC News that although he sympathized with the writers behind the action, he thought it was unlikely to succeed since the authors would need to establish ChatGPT had stolen and replicated their work.
He compared the concerns to the ones screenwriters are presently protesting in Hollywood, saying, "They're actually not really worried about copyright, what they're worried about is that AI is a job killer."
Goold thinks that bringing up copyright will not fix the fact that AI technology might replace human labor. The best course of action, according to him, is to have a discussion about the impending displacement of the creative arts by AI in Parliament and Congress.
