OpenAI is being sued by a stand-up comedian and a spate of authors who have accused the company of violating copyright laws.
Class-action lawsuits were filed in the federal court of San Francisco on July 7, according to US media reports. Comedian Sarah Silverman, and writers Richard Kadrey and Christopher Golden claim their published books were used for training the artificial intelligence (AI) tool ChatGPT without their consent.
Furthermore, Paul Tremblay, author of the 2018 novel, “The Cabin at the End of the World,” and novelist Mona Awad, also filed legal action against OpenAI, contending that ChatGPT “ingested” material from their copyrighted work without their permission.
This comes as the Authors Guild earlier urged chief executives of AI companies to "obtain permission" from writers before using their copyrighted work to train generative AI programs. The US-based advocacy group insisted in their open letter that writers ought to be "compensated fairly."
"Generative AI technologies built on large language models owe their existence to our writings. These technologies mimic and regurgitate our language, stories, style, and ideas. Millions of copyrighted books, articles, essays, and poetry provide the “food” for AI systems, endless meals for which there has been no bill. You’re spending billions of dollars to develop AI technology. It is only fair that you compensate us for using our writings, without which AI would be banal and extremely limited," the letter stated.
As conversational generative artificial intelligence chatbots like ChatGPT become the fastest-growing applications in history, people working in the creative field, like authors, have been voicing concern.
The worries about how the technology could impact their careers are increasingly being manifested into legal suits, with experts warning that copyright cases against generative AI tools can be expected to continue.