A group of 17 writers and the American guild of authors began a lawsuit against Openai, claiming that it illegally used their books to teach language models GPT 3.5 and GPT 4.
Among the plaintiffs are such famous names as George R. R. Martin, creator of “Ice and Fire Songs”, Michael Connelli, the author of a series of books about the detective of Harry Boshe, Jonathan Franzen, who wrote “Amendments” and “Freedom”, as well as John Grisham, author of the “company” and “cases of pelicans.”
According to the complaint, Openai “copied the works of plaintiffs without permission or compensation” and used the materials protected by the copyright to teach their large language models (LLM).
“The authors earn a living by creating their works. However, the language models of Openai threaten their ability to earn a living, since they allow anyone to automatically and for free (or very cheap) to generate a text for the creation of which they usually pay writers,” the lawsuit says .
The plaintiffs added that Openai admits the emergence of the work of writers, “based on their books, imitations, generalizations or paraphrasing”.
Writers emphasize that they are not against the use of artificial intelligence in principle, but they believe that they should have the right to resolve or prohibit the use of their works. In case of permission, the company should have paid them royalties.
According to the lawyers of the plaintiffs, the absence of the works of these authors would significantly change the nature and quality of commercial products Openai.
This lawsuit is the last among the court cases directed against Openai to famous writers. Earlier this month, Michael Shabon and other authors also filed a lawsuit against the company.