LOS ANGELES (CelebrityAccess) – Another day – another lawsuit has been filed against a generative AI model. Journalist and non-fiction author Julian Sancton is suing OpenAI and named Microsoft a defendant. The complaint was filed by Sanction on behalf of a group of non-fiction authors who said they were not compensated for the use of their books and academic journals in training the language model.
The new suit comes amid the current upheaval at OpenAI following the sudden firing and re-hiring of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The San Francisco-based company released a statement on Tuesday: “We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board.” In layman’s terms, the board that fired Altman has now been axed. The new board will be led by former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor, who chaired Twitter’s board before Elon Musk took over the company.
Sancton’s lawsuit, which is seeking class-action status, alleges OpenAI used his writing to train its ChatGPT model without getting his permission and, in doing so, infringed upon his copyright. Sancton’s lawyer said, “While OpenAI and Microsoft refuse to pay non-fiction authors, their AI platform is worth a fortune. The basis of OpenAI is nothing less than the rampant theft of copyrighted works.”
Sancton is the author behind Madhouse at the End of the Earth: The Belgica’s Journey Into the Dark Antarctic, which tells the true survival story of an 1897 polar expedition stuck in the ocean in the middle of a sunless Antarctic winter. Sancton spent five years and tens of thousands of dollars researching and writing the book. “Such an investment of time and money is feasible for Plaintiff Sancton and other writers because, in exchange for their creative efforts, the Copyright Act grants them a ‘bundle of exclusive rights’ in their works, including ‘the rights to reproduce the copyrighted work[s],'” according to the lawsuit.
Writers, musicians, content creators and owners have said if their copyright-protected works are used to train an AI model, the AI company must first get their permission. As Forbes notes, OpenAI previously said that content generated by ChatGPT doesn’t constitute “derivative work” and, hence, doesn’t infringe on any copyright. Sancton’s lawsuit is merely the latest complaint against the company over using copyrighted work to train its technology.
Sancton is not the first to sue OpenAI for alleged copyright infringement. Writers Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey and comedian Sarah Silverman filed a lawsuit in July, and then John Grisham, Jonathan Franzen, Mary Bly, Jodi Picoult, David Baldacci and George RR Martin filed together in September.
Golden, Kadrey and Silverman also sued Meta over its LLaMA AI model. But, following a court session earlier this month – much of that lawsuit has now been dismissed by the judge overseeing the legal battle. However, the copyright infringement claim remains.
