Proactive Investors - Game of Thrones author George R R Martin, along with John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and 14 other writers have sued OpenAI, alleging that artificial intelligence programs (AI) like ChatGPT are plagiarizing their copyrighted works.
A class-action suit was filed Tuesday by the Authors Guild, also including authors such as David Baldacci, Sylvia Day, Jonathan Franzen and Elin Hilderbrand, among others.
“It is imperative that we stop this theft in its tracks or we will destroy our incredible literary culture, which feeds many other creative industries in the US,” Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger said in a statement.
The suit specifically cites ChatGPT searches for each author in the case. For example, a search for Martin saw ChatGPT generate an “infringing, unauthorised, and detailed outline for a prequel” to Game of Thrones using existing characters from Martin’s novels.
This is far from the first suit filed by writers, artists and others. Aside from OpenAI, lawsuits have been filed against Meta and Staility AI over the content used to train their AI modes.
OpenAI and other AI defendants say scraping material from the internet is considered fair use under US copyright law.
On Wednesday, a spokesperson from the company said OpenAI is “having productive conversations with many creators around the world, including the Authors Guild”.