TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Paul Burch on Dec 21, 2023

A group of 11 nonfiction authors joined a lawsuit in Manhattan federal court alleging copyright violations by OpenAI and Microsoft when training the models behind ChatGPT and other artificial-intelligence based software, reports Reuters. The writers, including Pulitzer Prize winners Taylor Branch and Kai Bird, co-writer of the J. Robert Oppenheimer biography adapted into the 2023 film, told the court Tuesday the companies used their work to train OpenAI's language models. "The defendants are raking in billions from their unauthorized use of nonfiction books, and the authors of these books deserve fair compensation and treatment for it," the writers' attorney said on Wednesday. The case is one of several brought by copyright owners against OpenAI including authors John Grisham, George R.R. Martin and Jonathan Franzen.