OpenAI, led by Sam Altman, and Microsoft are facing another class-action lawsuit filed by non-fiction authors Nicholas Basbanes and Nicholas Gage. The lawsuit, submitted in the Manhattan federal court, alleges that Microsoft and OpenAI have "simply stole" copyrighted works to aid in constructing a billion-dollar artificial intelligence system.
According to reports from NBC, Basbanes and Gage aim to represent a class of writers whose copyrighted works have been systematically used by the defendants to train their large language models. The lawsuit asserts that Microsoft and OpenAI are no different from common thieves, and it seeks damages of up to $150,000 for each infringed work.
The lawsuit contends that OpenAI's system relies on extensive training by consuming vast amounts of written material, including books penned by Basbanes and Gage. As of now, Microsoft and OpenAI have not commented on the recent legal action.
This isn't the first time OpenAI has faced such allegations. In September of the previous year, the Authors' Guild and notable authors such as Jonathan Franzen, John Grisham, George R.R. Martin, and Jodi Picoult filed a lawsuit in the Southern district of New York against OpenAI. The complaint accused OpenAI of wholesale copying of the plaintiffs' works without permission, using them in large language models.
In the same month, another lawsuit involving authors Michael Chabon, David Henry Hwang, Rachel Louise Snyder, and Ayelet Waldman alleged that OpenAI derived benefits and profits from the unauthorized and illegal use of their copyrighted content. The legal challenges highlight the growing concerns and legal scrutiny surrounding the use of copyrighted material in the development of artificial intelligence systems.
(With Agency Inputs)
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