10,000 Writers Sue OpenAI For Stealing Content

Date: September 12, 2023

Over 10,000 writers have signed an open letter seeking the court’s help to stop OpenAI from using their content work without consent or compensation.

OpenAI has been facing multiple lawsuits from a wide range of professionals. Recently, a new group of writers has emerged with a plea for help against the illegal use of their original content work by OpenAI. The writers claim that OpenAI is using their content to train its GPT models without their consent or preset compensation.

The Lawsuit Against OpenAI

In the class-action status lawsuit filed on Friday, renowned writers Michael Carbon, David Henry, Hwang, Rachel Louise Snyder, and Ayelet Waldman have joined hands to fight against the unauthorized and illegal use of their copyrighted content. The lawsuit calls out ChatGPT’s ability to summarize, analyze, and reshare its content on its platform.

The Writer’s Logic

The writers come forward with a strong logic that their copyrighted content is being used with commercial intent without any preset agreement between OpenAI and them. While anyone can read their books for personal purposes, ChatGPT is using it to train its large language models to improve its capabilities. The summaries, interpretations, or highlights of their work, as ChatGPT can release whenever prompted by a user, cannot happen without it absorbing their content, which did not occur with their consent.

“OpenAI’s acts of copyright infringement have been intentional, willful, and in callous disregard of Plaintiffs’ and Class members’ rights,” the lawsuit claims. “OpenAI knew at all relevant times that the datasets it used to train its GPT models contained copyrighted materials and that its acts were in violation of the terms of use of the materials.”

An Open Letter To AI Makers

Chabon, the author of multiple famous books like The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, joined 10,000 other authors to sign an open letter against major Artificial Intelligence developers who use large language models for training. The open letter asks OpenAI, Meta, Google, and other companies first to obtain consent to use their copyrighted content and to provide fair-use compensation for the already used content. It also seeks to reveal a written acceptance of stopping the usage of their copyrighted materials without their permission or a commercial-use agreement.

This Is Not The First

In June, author Paul Tremblay and Mona Award sued OpenAI on the grounds of copyright infringement. Soon after, in July, Sarah Silverman, a famous comedian and author, joined Christopher Golden and Richard Karley in filing a lawsuit accusing Meta and OpenAI on similar grounds. The recent addition of a class-action status lawsuit seeks the court’s intervention to stop OpenAI from engaging in unlawful and unethical practices while compensating the authors fairly for the damages caused. OpenAI has not made any public comment on this allegation yet.