OpenAI Faces Copyright Lawsuit: Prominent Authors Unite in Seeking Hundreds of Millions in Damages
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OpenAI Faces Copyright Lawsuit: Prominent Authors Unite in Seeking Hundreds of Millions in Damages
The indictment stated: "Their conduct was no different from that of other thieves."
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy Dan Mangan
Translated by MetaverseHub
Two nonfiction authors have filed a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI, accusing them of "directly appropriating" the authors' copyrighted works to build a billion-dollar artificial intelligence (AI) system.
The lawsuit was filed Friday in federal court in Manhattan, just over a week after The New York Times filed a similar copyright infringement suit against Microsoft and OpenAI. That case alleges the companies used content from the newspaper to train large language models, including the AI chatbot ChatGPT they helped develop.
OpenAI created the AI chatbot ChatGPT, while Microsoft is both an investor in and supplier to OpenAI.
In their new complaint, authors Nicholas Basbanes and Nicholas Gage state: "Following The New York Times’ lawsuit, defendants Microsoft and OpenAI publicly acknowledged that copyright holders like plaintiffs must be compensated for the unauthorized use of their works."
The New York Times is seeking 'billions of dollars' in economic damages.
Basbanes and Gage say in the lawsuit they are attempting to represent a class of writers whose works were "systematically stolen" by Microsoft and OpenAI.
The complaint states: "Their conduct is no different from that of other thieves."
The proposed class would include all "authors or legal beneficiaries" in the United States whose works have been or are being used by Microsoft and OpenAI "to train their large language models." According to the lawsuit, this group could number in the tens of thousands.
The lawsuit seeks up to $150,000 in damages per infringed work.
Last September, a group of prominent American novelists—including George R.R. Martin, Jonathan Franzen, and Michael Connelly—sued OpenAI for copyright infringement and sought to form a class of fiction writers in federal court in Manhattan.
Mike Richter, the attorney representing Basbanes and Gage, said their new lawsuit covers a broader group of potential plaintiffs and should therefore be designated the lead class action in this matter, among other reasons.
Richter told CNBC that OpenAI's use of copyrighted material without permission was "outrageous," comparing the authors to "homeowners" and the misused content to "insulation, pipes, and other materials hidden behind the walls"—materials that may not be visible but whose use should obviously require payment.
"For some reason, these companies seem to devalue the work of writers," said the lawyer, who is also Basbanes' son-in-law.
The new lawsuit claims OpenAI's systems were trained by ingesting "vast quantities of written material," including books authored by Basbanes and Gage.
CNBC has requested comment from Microsoft and OpenAI regarding the new lawsuit.
Basbanes is a veteran journalist whose works include several books about books and book collectors, such as *A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books*.
Gage is an investigative reporter who has worked for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. His bestselling memoir *Eleni* details his family’s experiences in Greece during World War II and was adapted into a film starring John Malkovich.
In 1987, then-President Ronald Reagan mentioned *Eleni* and Gage by name in a national television address following a summit with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
Gage has written several other books and served as an executive producer on *The Godfather Part III*.
When sued by The New York Times, OpenAI stated in a press release: "We respect the rights of content creators and owners and are committed to working with them to ensure they benefit from AI technologies and new revenue models."
"Our ongoing dialogue with The New York Times has been productive and moving forward constructively, so we are surprised and disappointed by this development. We hope to find a mutually beneficial way to collaborate, as we have done with many other publishers."
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