- John Grisham and Jonathan Franzen also initiated legal action against OpenAI
- Microsoft created unlicensed copies of authors’ works for training purposes
OpenAI and Microsoft are being sued over allegedly illegal use of nonfiction authors’ work to train ChatGPT and other AI models. Author and Hollywood Reporter editor Julian Sancton has filed a lawsuit against the companies, Cointelegraph wrote, citing Sancton’s official complaint.
Sanction, who is leading a proposed class-action lawsuit in New York, has accused OpenAI of using tens of thousands of nonfiction books without authorization in the training of its language models to respond to human text prompts.
He joins the ranks of Grisham, Franzen
John Grisham, Jonathan Franzen, and other copyright owners have also initiated legal action against OpenAI and other tech firms. They allege their works were misused to train AI systems. The defendants have refuted the claims.
First case against Microsoft
Sancton’s lawsuit draws attention to Microsoft’s role in creating unlicensed copies of authors’ works for training purposes and developing pre-trained, generative machine learning. Sancton claims OpenAI perpetrated “indiscriminate internet crawling” for works subject to copyright and Microsoft was aware of this.
OpenAI is being sued by several parties over copyright infringement, but Microsoft had previously escaped scrutiny, even though the software giant introduced a wide variety of products integrated with ChatGPT.
Sancton’s lawsuit marks the first occasion, on which an author has named Microsoft as a defendant along with OpenAI.
The claims
Sancton claims OpenAI used his book Madhouse at the End of the Earth and other nonfiction books to train ChatGPT. The author is seeking a court order to stop the infringement as well as unspecified monetary damages.
Altman is back at OpenAI
In related news, OpenAI announced it was removing Sam Altman as CEO on November 17. Almost immediately thereafter, Microsoft hired him to helm its new AI division. Microsoft was among the main investors in OpenAI. Today, OpenAI reinstated Altman as CEO.
