George R.R. Martin, authors sue OpenAI over copyright

George R. R. Martin, Jodi Picoult and John Grisham are among the plaintiffs
The lawsuit alleges OpenAI used copyrighted works to train ChatGPT
The authors want to prevent the company from scraping copyrighted works

Updated: Sep 20, 2023 / 04:24 PM CDT

FILE – Author George R.R. Martin poses at the premiere of the film “Tolkien,” at the Regency Village Theatre on May 8, 2019, in Los Angeles. Warner Bros. Discovery is sticking with safe bet franchises that will likely lure viewers, including a “Harry Potter” series and a “Game of Thrones” prequel for its rebranded Max streaming service, the company announced Wednesday, April 12, 2023. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)

(NewsNation) — Big-name authors are suing OpenAI for copyright infringement over the company’s use of their books to train artificial intelligence programs that can generate literature.

The Authors Guild filed the lawsuit in New York, representing authors such as George R. R. Martin, Jonathan Franzen, John Grisham and Jodi Picoult.

The lawsuit is a proposed class-action suit, which accuses the company of using copyrighted works to train its ChatGPT AI. The writers say OpenAI copied their works without permission to create language models that train the software.

OpenAI doesn’t disclose the source of language used to train AI, but has admitted to using copyrighted works in the past. The complaint states ChatGPT is able to produce summaries of books that use material not publicly available in reviews or excerpts, pointing to that as evidence the company is copying whole works.

The authors say the use of their books could allow ChatGPT to create derivative works that could harm the market for their novels.

The lawsuit isn’t the first against OpenAI. Other authors have also sued over the company’s use of copyrighted works. This suit seeks class-action status and the plaintiffs are asking the court to issue an injunction to prevent OpenAI from using the works as well as paying damages to authors whose material was used.