George RR Martin, the author behind the hugely successful Game of Thrones franchise, along with other authors, has sued the generative AI company OpenAI. They allege that OpenAI has used their books to train ChatGPT and other AI models.
As reported by The Verge, 17 popular authors—including David Baldacci, Jonathan Franzen, John Grisham, George R.R. Martin, and Jodi Picoult—have filed the lawsuit in the Southern District of New York.
As per the complaint filed by the authors, OpenAI was accused of copying the authors’ “works wholesale, without permission or consideration.” Once copied, the information was used to train OpenAI’s large language models.
For those uninitiated, Large Language Models, or LLMs are the brains of any chatbot like ChatGPT or Google Bard. For instance, the free version of ChatGPT uses GPT 3.5, while Google uses its PaLM 2 model for Bard.
The complaint notes that these “authors’ livelihoods derive from the works they create. But Defendants’ LLMs endanger fiction writers’ ability to make a living, in that the LLMs allow anyone to generate—automatically and freely (or very cheaply)—texts that they would otherwise pay writers to create.” It added, “Moreover, Defendants’ LLMs can spit out derivative works: material that is based on, mimics, summarizes, or paraphrases Plaintiffs’ works, and harms the market for them.”
In reply, OpenAI’s (defendant) CEO Sam Altman said that he agrees with the authors’ concerns, and that he wants to ensure that the “creator economy continues to be vibrant is an important priority for OpenAI.”
“OpenAI does not want to replace creators,” Altman added.
It’s anyone’s guess how this battle between AI and creators will play out in the coming days, months, and years. Generative AI seems to be here to stay, and as LLMs get better, they may need more training material to keep up. It will be interesting to see how this pans out.
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