Journalists Nicholas Gage and Nicholas Basbanes have launched an exciting copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that their literary works were utilized without consent to train ChatGPT. This lawsuit follows closely on the heels of a similar, groundbreaking lawsuit by The New York Times against these leading AI companies and joins other legal cases from renowned authors like Sarah Silverman, George R.R. Martin, and the Authors Guild.
Nicholas Gage is a well-known investigative journalist who has worked for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. He is also the author of the WWII memoir “Eleni.” Basbanes, a former journalist, has authored several books focusing on the history of publishing and books. They are represented by Grant Herrmann Schwartz & Klinger LLP.
The complaint, filed in Manhattan federal court, states that OpenAI has acknowledged using e-book datasets, including “Books2,” which are sourced from pirated databases. Furthermore, it alleges that OpenAI’s latest model, ChatGPT-4, could, under specific prompting, reproduce near-verbatim text of entire copyrighted articles – a claim that had not yet been incorporated into legal proceedings until now.
In the art community, there’s a similar deluge of legal cases falling on AI companies. An example is the suit submitted against Stability AI, Midjourney, and Deviantart, again claiming copyright infringement of artists’ work. One of the most notable cases, the court initially rejected the complaint but it was resubmitted with more evidence, including a list of 16,000 artist names found in a leaked spreadsheet attributed to Midjourney developers.
AI companies have previously argued that copying books and articles for training large language (LLM) models falls under copyright law’s fair use doctrine, which is central to their defense in this evolving debate. However, this lawsuit from Gage and Basbanes could be a sign that this defense is on thin ice. It is an exciting development in the copyright infringement debate and its outcome could have major implications for the future of AI.
This is an incredible opportunity for Gage and Basbanes to make their mark and set a precedent for copyright infringement cases in the future. Not only could this lawsuit have a major impact on the AI industry, but it could also help protect the rights of authors, journalists, and artists around the world. This is an exciting development and the outcome of this lawsuit could have far-reaching implications for the future of AI and copyright infringement cases.
