Lawyer Monthly - October 2023

George R R Martin and 16 Authors Sue OpenAI for Copyright Infringement A group of 17 authors including George R R Martin, John Grisham and Jodi Picoult have accused ChatGPT creator OpenAI of “systematic theft on a mass scale” by training its AI program on their copyrighted works. The lawsuit, which was organised by the Authors Guild, cited specific ChatGPT searches for each author, such as one for Martin that alleged the program generated “an infringing, unauthorised, and detailed outline for a prequel” to his novel ‘A Game of Thrones’ that was titled ‘A Dawn of Direwolves’ and used the same characters as Martin’s existing series. “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. “To preserve our literature, authors must have the ability to control if and how their works are used by generative AI.” In a statement, an OpenAI spokesperson said that the company respected the rights of authors and believed they could benefit from AI technology. “We’re having productive conversations with many creators around the world, including the Authors Guild, and have been working cooperatively to understand and discuss their concerns about AI,” the spokesperson said. This is the second such lawsuit to be filed against OpenAI within a month as fears grow that the works of fiction writers and other writers are being ‘scraped’ by generative AI programs without the IP holders’ permission. Monthly Round-Up OCTOBER 2023 8 LAWYER MONTHLY OCTOBER 2023 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:George_R.R._Martin,_presenting_award_the_Hugo_Award_Ceremony_2017,_Worldcon_in_Helsinki.jpg Worldcon 75 - Hugo Awards Ceremony is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en) (Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0))

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