B
attles between human and artificial intelligence are no longer science fiction. The strikes in Hollywood led by the united guilds of actors and screenwriters have a common, intangible enemy: the algorithms and computer-generated imagery that are increasingly programmed by studios to render them redundant.
In New York last week, a new front in that stand-off was opened by a group of American novelists – including John Grisham, Jodi Picoult, and Jonathan Franzen – who are suing OpenAI, the creators of the ChatGPT program. The writers claim the software company has trampled over their copyright by “feeding” its program with their books, “training it” not only in natural language but perhaps eventually to produce page-turners of its own. (The lawsuit alleges, for example, that ChatGPT has already created an unauthorized and detailed outline for a “prequel” to George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones novel series, entitled, not entirely convincingly, A Dawn of Direwolves.)
The legal case may help to define and protect those increasingly porous boundaries between human creativity and the robots that mimic it. In the meantime, Amazon, these days flooded by self-published books written by AI, has taken its first half-hearted steps to curtail that practice. The retailer has set a limit to the number of books that any one novelist can reasonably upload. Writers toiling away at the fifth revision of their long overdue debut will no doubt be comforted to know that the limit is set to three books a day.
Atrophy in the Lords
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