Two authors have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that the organization unlawfully used their published books to train ChatGPT without their consent. The authors, Mona Awad and Paul Tremblay, claim that ChatGPT's advanced language model "ingested" their copyrighted works, as evidenced by its ability to generate detailed summaries of their books. This lawsuit is the latest example of the growing tension between creative individuals and generative AI tools that can rapidly produce text and images. Legal challenges of this nature may become more prevalent in the future.
According to Daniel Gervais, a law professor at Vanderbilt University, this lawsuit is one among several copyright cases against generative AI tools across the country. Gervais predicts that as these programs continue to advance and improve in replicating the styles of authors and artists, more authors will likely sue companies developing large language models and generative AI. He believes there will soon be a surge of legal challenges targeting the output of tools like ChatGPT.
Proving the authors' monetary damages resulting from OpenAI's data-collection practices, as alleged in the complaint, could be challenging. Gervais suggests that ChatGPT may have acquired Awad and Tremblay's work from sources other than the authors' original materials. However, he acknowledges the possibility that the bot did "ingest" their books, as claimed in the lawsuit. Andres Guadamuz, an expert in AI and copyright at the University of Sussex, shares similar concerns, stating that even if the books are included in OpenAI's training datasets, the company could have obtained them through lawful means, such as collecting data from alternative sources.
Guadamuz also explains that demonstrating ChatGPT's different behavior in the absence of the authors' work is unlikely due to the vast amount of data the system gathers from the web. The Authors Guild, a US-based advocacy group supporting the rights of writers, published an open letter calling on the CEOs of Big Tech and AI companies to obtain permission from writers and compensate them fairly for using their copyrighted work in training generative AI programs. The letter has received over 2,000 signatures.
Awad and Tremblay's lawsuit was filed on the same day that OpenAI faced another legal complaint, accusing the company of unlawfully collecting "massive amounts of personal data" that were later fed into ChatGPT. The lengthy complaint, filed by 16 anonymous plaintiffs, criticized OpenAI for absorbing virtually all internet-exchanged data it could access.
In their lawsuit, filed in a Northern California district court, Awad and Tremblay are seeking damages and the recovery of alleged lost profits. The filing also includes documents containing ChatGPT-generated summaries of Awad's novels "13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl" and "Bunny," as well as Tremblay's "The Cabin at the End of the World," which was adapted into the film "Knock at the Cabin" by M. Night Shyamalan.
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