Michael Chabon sues OpenAI for violating copyright

A group of authors, including Michael Chabon and Rachel Louise Snyder sued ChatGPT developer OpenAI for allegedly benefiting and profiting from the 'unauthorized and illegal use' of their copyrighted content. The lawsuit called out ChatGPT ’s ability to summarise and analyse content written by authors Michael Chabon, David Henry Hwang, Rachel Louise Snyder, and Ayelet Waldman, stating this 'is only possible' if OpenAI trained its GPT large language model on their works. It added that these outputs are actually 'derivative' works that infringe on their copyrights. The suit also highlighted “infamous ‘shadow library’ websites, like Library Genesis , Z-Library , Sci-Hub, and Bibliotik, which host massive collections of pirated books … have long been of interest to the AI training community.” The lawsuit also asked the court to stop OpenAI from engaging in "unlawful and unfair business practices" while awarding the authors damages related to copyright violations and other penalties. System 🤖 ChatGPT Operator: Michael Chabon, David Henry Hwang, Rachel Louise Snyder, Ayelet Waldman Developer: OpenAI Country: USA Sector: Media/entertainment/sports/arts Purpose: Generate text Technology: Chatbot; NLP/text analysis; Neural network; Deep learning; Machine learning; Reinforcement learning Issue: Copyright; Transparency Regulation ⚖️ US Digital Millennium Copyright Act Legal, regulatory 👩🏼‍⚖️ Chabon et al v. OpenAI, Inc. et al

Date it happened

2023-09-01

Organisation involved

Michael Chabon, David Henry Hwang, Rachel Louise Snyder, Ayelet Waldman

Product, system or model

ChatGPT

This is a record of what was reported, not a finding that anyone broke the law. If it names your organisation and you believe it is wrong, the corrections process is free and open to everyone.