Source: Heart of the Metaverse
Two non-fiction book authors have filed a class action lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI, alleging "direct misappropriation" of the authors' copyrighted works , just to build an AI (artificial intelligence) system worth $1 billion.
The lawsuit was filed in Manhattan federal court on Friday, more than a week after the New York Times filed similar infringement lawsuits against Microsoft and OpenAI. The New York Times lawsuit alleges that these companies used the newspaper’s content to train large language models, including the AI chatbot they developed, ChatGPT.
OpenAI created the AI chatbot ChatGPT, and Microsoft is an investor and supplier of OpenAI.
The new lawsuit by the two authors involved in this case, Nicholas Basbanes and Nicholas Gage, states: “After the New York Times filed the lawsuit, defendants Microsoft and OpenAI publicly admitted that, Copyright owners like the plaintiffs must be compensated for the defendants’ unauthorized uses of their works.”
The New York Times’ lawsuit seeks “billions of dollars” in financial damages. .
Basbanes and Gage said in the lawsuit that they were trying to represent a class of writers whose work had been "stolen by Microsoft and OpenAI systems."
The lawsuit states: "Their behavior is no different from other thieves."
The class they represent will include all "authors or legal beneficiaries" in the United States, These works have been or are being used by Microsoft and OpenAI to "train their large language models." The lawsuit estimates the size of the group to be in the tens of thousands.
The lawsuit seeks damages of up to $150,000 for each infringed work.
In September last year, a group of famous American novelists, including George R.R. Martin, Jonathan Franzen and Michael Connelly, sued OpenAI for copyright infringement and tried to A Manhattan federal court forms an advocacy group for fiction writers.
Mike Richter, an attorney representing Basbanes and Gage, said their new lawsuit will cover a broader group of plaintiffs and should be designated as the primary class action on the issue for that and other reasons.
Richter told CNBC that OpenAI's use of copyrighted works without permission is "very outrageous," likening the writers to "house owners" and the stolen works to "Insulation, pipes and other materials hidden behind the walls of a house" are considered invisible, but it stands to reason that there is a fee to use them.
“For some reason, the company seems to be disparaging the writer’s work,” said the lawyer, who is Basbanes’ son-in-law.
The new lawsuit claims that OpenAI’s system was trained by ingesting “a large amount of written material,” including books written by Basbanes and Gage.
CNBC has asked Microsoft and OpenAI to comment on the new lawsuit.
Basbanes is a veteran journalist whose works include several books about books and the people who collect them, including "Elite Madness: Bibliophiles, Bookworms, and the Undying Love of Books." .
Gage is an investigative reporter who has worked for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. His best-selling memoir, Eleni, detailing his family's experiences in Greece during World War II, was made into a film starring John Malkovich.
In 1987, then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan mentioned the names of "Eleni" and Gage in a nationally televised speech after holding a summit with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
Gage has written several other books and served as an executive producer on the film "The Godfather Part III."
When sued by the New York Times, OpenAI said in a statement, “We respect the rights of content creators and owners and are committed to working with them to ensure they benefit from AI technology and new technologies. revenue model."
"Our ongoing dialogue with The New York Times is productive and moving forward constructively, so we are Surprised and disappointed by this turn of events. We hope to find a mutually beneficial way to work together, as we have done with many other publishers."
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