SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – Authors Nicholas Basbanes and Nicholas Gage have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft for allegedly misusing their work without proper authorization. The authors claim that their books were included in the data used to train OpenAI’s GPT large language model, which powers services like ChatGPT. The lawsuit comes after the New York Times took legal action against OpenAI, accusing the company of using millions of articles from the newspaper to train their chatbot without permission.
The legal dispute raises important questions regarding copyright infringement and the boundaries of fair use in the AI industry. Simon Newcomb, a technology lawyer based in Australia, believes that the complaint from the New York Times provides strong evidence of infringing output from the GPT model. However, the larger issue at stake is whether the act of training a model with publicly available data constitutes fair use under US copyright law.
The New York Times argues that OpenAI’s use of their copyrighted content is not transformative and does not qualify as fair use. They claim that the outputs generated by OpenAI’s models compete with and closely resemble the inputs used for training, making the copying of the Times’ works unfair. On the other hand, some US academics and commentators argue that training a model with third-party data constitutes fair use.
To resolve this legal matter and establish a common position within the industry, it is likely that a decision from a superior court will be necessary. The outcome of the Times’ lawsuit against OpenAI may set a precedent for future AI copyright cases.
As the AI industry continues to advance and rely on large-scale language models like GPT, it is imperative to address the legal and ethical implications of using copyrighted materials without proper authorization. The lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft serves as a reminder that the boundaries of fair use and intellectual property rights need to be clarified in relation to AI models and their training data.
In summary, authors Nicholas Basbanes and Nicholas Gage have taken legal action against OpenAI and Microsoft, accusing the companies of infringing their copyrights by using their books to train AI models. This lawsuit follows a similar case filed by the New York Times against OpenAI. The dispute raises important questions about fair use and copyright infringement in the AI industry, and a decision from a superior court may be necessary to establish a common position. The outcome of these legal battles will shape the future of AI development and its reliance on copyrighted materials.