Renowned Authors File Lawsuit Against OpenAI for Alleged ‘Systemic Plagiarism’

A new group of authors is taking legal action against OpenAI, claiming that the company has infringed on their copyrights by using pirated books to train its AI chatbot, ChatGPT. The lawsuit, filed in New York, accuses OpenAI of “systematic theft on a mass scale” and alleges that its success is built on mass copyright infringement without permission or compensation to the authors. The complaint has 17 plaintiffs, including well-known authors such as David Baldacci, John Grisham, and George Saunders.

The Authors Guild, which previously organized a letter signed by thousands of authors calling for fair compensation, is supporting the lawsuit. OpenAI has admitted to using copyrighted work to train ChatGPT, but which specific works were used is unclear. The complaint argues that ChatGPT is capable of producing summaries of books with unique details not found online, suggesting that the program learned the books cover to cover. Novelist Douglas Preston, a plaintiff in the case, was shocked when ChatGPT provided detailed information about minor characters in his own books, leading him to realize that the chatbot had “read” his work.

The lawsuit claims that by creating derivative works that mimic and summarize the authors’ original work, ChatGPT is harming the market for their books without compensating them. The suit argues that OpenAI could have paid a reasonable licensing fee to use the copyrighted works but instead chose to use pirated copies. The authors argue that this is a clear case of infringement based on established copyright law. This is not the first lawsuit against AI systems brought by authors. In a previous copyright suit, OpenAI argued for fair use of texts for innovations.