The authors said in the Wednesday court filing that Microsoft-backed OpenAI violated U.S. law by copying their works to train an artificial intelligence system that will “replace the very writings it copied.”
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“OpenAI is clearly signaling its intent to unilaterally rewrite U.S. copyright law in its favor – starting now,” the writers said.
Representatives for OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the motion on Thursday. Joseph Saveri, an attorney for the writers, said on Thursday that they were “confident that our claims will be sustained.”
Copyright owners have filed several recent lawsuits against tech companies including Meta Platforms, Stability AI and OpenAI over the use of their work to train generative AI software.
Two groups of authors filed proposed class-action lawsuits against OpenAI this summer for using their books to train its large language model ChatGPT to respond to human text prompts. Another group of writers including John Grisham and “Game of Thrones” author George R.R. Martin filed a separate lawsuit against the company in New York earlier this month.
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OpenAI asked the court to dismiss parts of the California lawsuits in August, arguing that the text ChatGPT creates does not violate the authors’ rights. It also denied the authors’ core allegation that the use of their books to train ChatGPT infringes their copyrights, but did not ask the court to dismiss the claims on that basis. The writers on Wednesday reiterated their argument that the large language model and its creations are “derivative works” of their books that infringe their copyrights. They also said OpenAI’s argument that ChatGPT’s output is not similar enough to their work to violate their rights was “flat wrong.”
The writers said that substantial similarity was not necessary to prove infringement in their case because OpenAI had directly copied their works.
The authors also said OpenAI’s motion “telegraphs” a future defense that it made fair use of their work under copyright law, an important concept for the AI-training cases. They said OpenAI’s reading of fair use is “at odds with settled precedent” and would “entirely swallow” the U.S. copyright system.
The cases are Tremblay v. OpenAI Inc, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 3:23-cv-03223 and Silverman v. OpenAI Inc, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 3:23-cv-03416.
