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Yesterday, popular authors including John Grisham, Jonathan Franzen, George R.R. Martin, Jodi Picoult, and George Saunders joined the Authors Guild in suing OpenAI, alleging that training the company's large language models (LLMs) used to power AI tools like ChatGPT on pirated versions of their books violates copyright laws and is "systematic theft on a mass scale."

“Generative AI is a vast new field for Silicon Valley's longstanding exploitation of content providers," Franzen said in a statement provided to Ars. "Authors should have the right to decide when their works are used to ‘train’ AI. If they choose to opt in, they should be appropriately compensated.”

OpenAI has previously argued against two lawsuits filed earlier this year by authors making similar claims that authors suing "misconceive the scope of copyright, failing to take into account the limitations and exceptions (including fair use) that properly leave room for innovations like the large language models now at the forefront of artificial intelligence."

This latest complaint argued that OpenAI's "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."

Authors are also concerned that the LLMs fuel AI tools that "can spit out derivative works: material that is based on, mimics, summarizes, or paraphrases" their works, allegedly turning their works into "engines of" authors' "own destruction" by harming the book market for them. Even worse, the complaint alleged, businesses are being built around opportunities to create allegedly derivative works:

Businesses are sprouting up to sell prompts that allow users to enter the world of an author’s books and create derivative stories within that world. For example, a business called Socialdraft offers long prompts that lead ChatGPT to engage in 'conversations' with popular fiction authors like Plaintiff Grisham, Plaintiff Martin, Margaret Atwood, Dan Brown, and others about their works, as well as prompts that promise to help customers 'Craft Bestselling Books with AI.'

They claimed that OpenAI could have trained their LLMs exclusively on works in the public domain or paid authors "a reasonable licensing fee" but chose not to. Authors feel that without their copyrighted works, OpenAI "would have no commercial product with which to damage—if not usurp—the market for these professional authors’ works."

"There is nothing fair about this," the authors' complaint said.

Their complaint noted that OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman claims that he shares their concerns, telling Congress that "creators deserve control over how their creations are used” and deserve to "benefit from this technology." But, the claim adds, so far, Altman and OpenAI—which, claimants allege, "intend to earn billions of dollars" from their LLMs—have "proved unwilling to turn these words into actions."

Saunders said that the lawsuit—which is a proposed class action estimated to include tens of thousands of authors, some of multiple works, where OpenAI could owe $150,000 per infringed work—was an "effort to nudge the tech world to make good on its frequent declarations that it is on the side of creativity." He also said that stakes went beyond protecting authors' works.

"Writers should be fairly compensated for their work," Saunders said. "Fair compensation means that a person’s work is valued, plain and simple. This, in turn, tells the culture what to think of that work and the people who do it. And the work of the writer—the human imagination, struggling with reality, trying to discern virtue and responsibility within it—is essential to a functioning democracy.”

The authors' complaint said that as more writers have reported being replaced by AI content-writing tools, more authors feel entitled to compensation from OpenAI. The Authors Guild told the court that 90 percent of authors responding to an internal survey from March 2023 "believe that writers should be compensated for the use of their work in 'training' AI." On top of this, there are other threats, their complaint said, including that "ChatGPT is being used to generate low-quality ebooks, impersonating authors, and displacing human-authored books."

Authors claimed that despite Altman's public support for creators, OpenAI is intentionally harming creators, noting that OpenAI has admitted to training LLMs on copyrighted works and claiming that there's evidence that OpenAI's LLMs "ingested" their books "in their entireties."

"Until very recently, ChatGPT could be prompted to return quotations of text from copyrighted books with a good degree of accuracy," the complaint said. "Now, however, ChatGPT generally responds to such prompts with the statement, 'I can’t provide verbatim excerpts from copyrighted texts.'"

To authors, this suggests that OpenAI is exercising more caution in the face of authors' growing complaints, perhaps since authors have alleged that the LLMs were trained on pirated copies of their books. They've accused OpenAI of being "opaque" and refusing to discuss the sources of their LLMs' data sets.

Authors have demanded a jury trial and asked a US district court in New York for a permanent injunction to prevent OpenAI's alleged copyright infringement, claiming that if OpenAI's LLMs continue to illegally leverage their works, they will lose licensing opportunities and risk being usurped in the book market.

Ars could not immediately reach OpenAI for comment. [Update: OpenAI's spokesperson told Ars that “creative professionals around the world use ChatGPT as a part of their creative process. We respect the rights of writers and authors, and believe they should 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. We’re optimistic we will continue to find mutually beneficial ways to work together to help people utilize new technology in a rich content ecosystem.”]

Rachel Geman, a partner with Lieff Cabraser and co-counsel for the authors, said that OpenAI's "decision to copy authors’ works, done without offering any choices or providing any compensation, threatens the role and livelihood of writers as a whole.” She told Ars that "this is in no way a case against technology. This is a case against a corporation to vindicate the important rights of writers.”

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[–] Ronnie@lemmy.ca 65 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Holy cow the comments here are so alarming. OpenAI isn't some non profit trying to better humanity. They are a for profit company making money with a product that is ILLEGALY derived from the work of others. Why are y'all so apathetic? Pretty disheartening.

[–] Laticauda@lemmy.ca 24 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Lemmy's opinion on the topic is often very biased towards the views of tech bros rather than writers/creators, at least that's what I've observed. Tech bros have a boner for LLM AIs. They don't have anything to lose from the development of these AIs, so they don't seem to understand the concerns of people who do.

[–] cloudy1999@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 year ago (6 children)

This has been a surprise for me. I see this community as pro privacy, anti big tech, and anti capitalism. AI seems like a hot button issue at the confluence of all three, and yet comments suggest many have rose tinted glasses for tech companies with LLMs.

[–] jpeps@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

To pile onto that, I was recently disturbed to find I was the dissenting voice in a comment thread by saying that we should not use AI to produce generated CSAM. The top comment defended the idea.

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[–] damndotcommie@lemmy.basedcount.com 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah, I was downvoted to hell in a copyright thread for suggesting that my work had worth and that I wasn't just freely handing it over to the general public. Sounds like a bunch of 12 year olds that have never created a fucking thing in their life except for some artistic skidmarks in their underwear. These kids have a lot to learn about life.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Look at any discussion around Sync for Lemmy and you'll get the same thing. Oh a developer created an app that is a flawless experience so far and looks great, and he wants 20 bucks for it? Burn him at the stake!

I'm all for FOSS and stuff but people here lean more entitled than they do "free and open".

[–] McScience@discuss.online 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah. I write software for a living and I use open source stuff extensively. I contribute sometimes to open source projects, but not everything can be open source or I'll be back to flipping burgers.

[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

Personally I write for free, simply because of the joy of it, and what I heard that Google was using people's Google Drives is free training for their bots, I pulled everything. Not because I want to make a buck, but because Google sure as hell was going to make a buck off of my work without paying me a dime. It's a little known as principle.

[–] Neve8028@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Tech bros have a boner for LLM AIs. They don't have anything to lose from the development of these AIs, so they don't seem to understand the concerns of people who do.

On top of this, it's becoming increasingly clear that many tech bros have never been genuinely moved by a piece of art whether it's visual or written so they genuinely don't understand that AI art is devoid of any real emotional impact. AI art just throws together cliches. It reminds me of that shitty AI generated conversation between Plato and Bill Gates when were so many tech bros talking about how "inspiring" it was.

Don't get me wrong, I love these AI tools coming out but they're so over hyped sometimes.

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[–] BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 17 points 1 year ago

I don't exactly love the outsourcing of human creativity to AI, and personally really hope society continues to value actual human creativity, but the illegality of this stuff simply hasn't been established.

What is clear is that directly reproducing copyrighted works is illegal. Additionally, a human taking extensive inspiration from copyrighted works is generally perfectly legal. Some of the key questions are:

  1. Are AI models illegally reproducing copyrighted works?
  2. Does the sheer ease of use and scale of AI make a meaningful difference such that extensive inspiration is illegal?
  3. If AIs being extensively inspired by copyrighted works is in fact legal under current law, should it be? Or should legislation be passed explicitly stating that there's a material difference due to the drastically different speed and scale of, say, telling an AI to write Winds of Winter compared to an actual human struggling for years and years, and thus AI works need to be treated differently?

Personally, I'd say that (1) is a maybe, (2) is a no under current law, and therefore (3) is a yes, and I'd love to see legislation passed clarifying how we as a society want to treat AI works. I'm strongly of the opinion that human creativity is something very special and that it should be protected, but I am concerned about a future where that isn't valued very much in the face of an AI that knows your personal tastes exactly and can simply generate all the "content" you want in an instant.

[–] thallazar@lemmynsfw.com 5 points 1 year ago

Isn't the point of the lawsuit to find out if it's illegal? Until a ruling comes down, it's pretty ambiguous.

[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

I was on board with AI using pre-existing Works to learn off of, but this was before they started hiding their content behind subscription services. Once that happened this became unethical. It's the difference between having a Pokemon fan game, and trying to publish your own fan mod of Pokemon sword and shield onto the market and expecting Nintendo just be cool with it.

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[–] Stovetop@lemmy.world 33 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Has George R. R. Martin even released a book since LLMs began collecting data? A Dance with Dragons came out 12 years ago.

[–] NounsAndWords@lemmy.world 57 points 1 year ago (2 children)

He's written like a dozen novellas since then. I think he just got really sick of writing long stories and has enough money to just do whatever he feels like....which appears to not be finishing GoT.

[–] ourob@discuss.tchncs.de 31 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I think he’s also not sure how to untangle the knots he’s tied in a satisfying way, and the disappointing reception of the tv series ending probably further killed his motivation. Like you said, he’s got plenty of money, so it’s easy to procrastinate untangling his story threads.

[–] SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 year ago

Absolutely agreed. GRRM usually takes the Gordian knot solution to untangling those, but I had the exact same thought that he painted himself into a corner with the complexity of the storyline. He should have broken it down into smaller chunks and do 15 books instead of 5.

[–] Saganastic@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Honestly, AI could be the tool that helps him break through and finish his series. It's ridiculous that he's suing OpenAI instead of using their tools to help him power through and finally finish what he started almost three decades ago.

[–] moistclump@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Maybe he can get ChatGPT to finish it.

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[–] hypelightfly@kbin.social 11 points 1 year ago

Yes, plenty. Just not the one people want.

[–] dingleberry@discuss.tchncs.de 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

GRRM ensuring no one can complete his work once he is gone.

[–] Colorcodedresistor@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I caught him later on in 2006 and jesus christ. still no finish. Feast of Crows was soul sucking to read, I can't believe i did that to myself.

[–] vanderbilt@kbin.social 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The first country to kill off LLMs with draconian interpretations of copyright law will simply be handing the industry to other countries on a golden platter. For this reason, I don't see the U.S. ruling in any sort of way that would damage the AI industry too much. There is simply too much money involved.

[–] AnonTwo@kbin.social 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

If enough countries join in then there will be a barrier to actually making money off of it. Even if you become the leader in AI if your method is just banned in other countries the money won't be there.

That being said, it doesn't seem like it's going to get very far anyway.

[–] vanderbilt@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago

Given how we train models (content and math), AIs is not practical to ban/legislate away. While the public applications of AI are for content generation and NLP, as @Rinox alluded to, the military applications are where we are going to see the most focus from the government. As an example, the Lantirn targeting pod uses SVMs to profile aircraft from afar, and it took enormous engineering to get it accurate. Comparable object detection functionality can be obtained with NNs and off-the-shelf GPUs. Countries like China already have "differing philosophies" when it comes to intellectual property rights, so we can remove the largest manufacturing market from the potential list of those who would blanket ban AI. Ditto on any possibility of their military forgoing AI either.

The real problem here is copyright law, which has extended protections far and above the length of time that is reasonable. Had we terms of say 35 years, we could simply train on older material.

[–] Rinox@feddit.it 5 points 1 year ago

It's not about making money, not only at least. The other reason why the US, China and other countries are obsessed with AI, LLM, NN, ML is because it may prove decisive for their militaries.

What is thought by most militaries today is that we are at a turning point of sorts and the next generation of weapons will be powered by AI in some capacity, and the more we go on, the more AI will be involved (target acquisition, reaction, drone and missile guidance, APS, AA, etc)

[–] ryathal@sh.itjust.works 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

They are fighting an uphill battle to get anything. It's a pretty strong argument that training a model is fair use.

[–] donuts@kbin.social 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Funny, but I don't think there's a very strong argument that training AI is fair use, especially when you consider how it intersects with the standard four factors that generally determine whether a use of copyrighted work is fair or not.

Specifically stuff like:

courts tend to give greater protection to creative works; consequently, fair use applies more broadly to nonfiction, rather than fiction. Courts are usually more protective of art, music, poetry, feature films, and other creative works than they might be of nonfiction works.

Courts have ruled that even uses of small amounts may be excessive if they take the “heart of the work.” ... Photographs and artwork often generate controversies, because a user usually needs the full image, or the full “amount,” and this may not be a fair use.

(Keep in mind that many popular AI models have been trained on vast amounts of entire artworks, large sections of text, etc.)

Effect on the market is perhaps more complicated than the other three factors. Fundamentally, this factor means that if you could have realistically purchased or licensed the copyrighted work, that fact weighs against a finding of fair use. To evaluate this factor, you may need to make a simple investigation of the market to determine if the work is reasonably available for purchase or licensing. A work may be reasonably available if you are using a large portion of a book that is for sale at a typical market price. “Effect” is also closely linked to “purpose.” If your purpose is research or scholarship, market effect may be difficult to prove. If your purpose is commercial, then adverse market effect may be easier to prove.

To me, this factor is by far the strongest argument against AI being considered fair use.

The fact is that today's generative AI is being widely used for commercial purposes and stands to have a dramatic effect on the market for the same types of work that they are using to train their data models--work that they could realistically have been licensing, and probably should be.

Ask any artist, writer, musician, or other creator whether they think it's "fair" to use their work to generate commercial products without any form of credit, consent or compensation, and the vast majority will tell you it isn't. I'm curious what "strong argument" that AI training is fair use is, because I'm just not seeing it.

[–] ryathal@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 year ago (5 children)

AI training is taking facts which aren't subject to copyright, not actual content that is subject to it. The original work or a derivative isn't being distributed or copied. While it may be possible for a user to recreate a copyrighted material with sufficient prompting, the fact it's possible isn't any more relevant than for a copy machine. It's the same as an aspiring author reading all of Martin's work for inspiration. They can write a story based on a vaguely medieval England full of rape and murder, without paying Martin a dime. What they can't do is call it Westeros, or have the main character be named Eddard Stork.

There may be an argument that a copy needs to be purchased to extract the facts, but that's not any special license, a used copy of the book would be sufficient.

AI isn't doing anything that hasn't already been done by humans for hundreds of years, it's just doing it faster.

[–] pulaskiwasright@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It's the same as an aspiring author reading all of Martin's work for inspiration. They can write a story based on a vaguely medieval England full of rape and murder, without paying Martin a dime. What they can't do is call it Westeros, or have the main character be named Eddard Stork.

This isn’t about a person reading things and taking inspiration and writing a similar story though. This is about a company consuming copyrighted works to and selling software that is built on those copyrighted works and depends on those copyrighted works. It’s different.

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[–] knitwitt@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If I took 100 of the world's best-selling novels, wrote each individual word onto a flashcard, shuffled the entire deck, then created an entirely new novel out of that, (with completely original characters, plot threads, themes, and messaged) could it be said that I produced stolen work?

What if I specifically attempted to emulate the style of the number one author on that list? What if instead of 100 novels, I used 1,000 or 10,000? What if instead of words on flashcards, I wrote down sentences? What if it were letters instead?

At some point, regardless of by what means the changes were derived, a transformed work must pass a threshold whereby content alone it is sufficiently different enough that it can no longer be considered derivative.

[–] habanhero@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Y'all are missing the point, what you said is about AI output and is not the main issue in the lawsuit. The lawsuit is about the input to AI - authors want to choose if their content may be used to train AI or not (and if yes, be compensated for it).

There is an analogy elsewhere in this thread that is pretty apt - this scenario is akin to an university using pirated textbooks to educate their students. Whether or not the student ended up pursing a field that uses the knowledge does not matter - the issue is the university should not have done so in the first place (and remember, the university is not only profiting off of this but also saving money by shafting the authors).

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[–] Laticauda@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 year ago

Not even collage art automatically counts as fair use.

[–] DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I don't see how this could work.

ChatGPTs output is not a derivative of a specific novel.

[–] livus@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago (6 children)

@DogMuffins

As I understand it, it's not about the output it's about the input.

Same basic principle as why universities don't simply give students a pirated copy of the entire textbook.

[–] Akisamb@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Same principle why Google can index pretty much all books in existence. They were sued over this and won. Same thing will happen here.

As long as these models are not providing the copyrighted material to their users they should be safe.

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[–] hypelightfly@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Universities giving away pirated textbooks is output.

[–] livus@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

@hypelightfly It's input into the students' brains.

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It may not calculate well mathematically, if not factually at all, but ChatGPT can sure as hell wax poetically with some direction and input.

But the best I can say is that, for now, ChatGPT should be only be relegated to Fanfics, tbh, lmao...

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Martin, Jodi Picoult, and George Saunders joined the Authors Guild in suing OpenAI, alleging that training the company's large language models (LLMs) used to power AI tools like ChatGPT on pirated versions of their books violates copyright laws and is "systematic theft on a mass scale."

They claimed that OpenAI could have trained their LLMs exclusively on works in the public domain or paid authors "a reasonable licensing fee" but chose not to.

But, the claim adds, so far, Altman and OpenAI—which, claimants allege, "intend to earn billions of dollars" from their LLMs—have "proved unwilling to turn these words into actions."

Saunders said that the lawsuit—which is a proposed class action estimated to include tens of thousands of authors, some of multiple works, where OpenAI could owe $150,000 per infringed work—was an "effort to nudge the tech world to make good on its frequent declarations that it is on the side of creativity."

On top of this, there are other threats, their complaint said, including that "ChatGPT is being used to generate low-quality ebooks, impersonating authors, and displacing human-authored books."

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 original article contains 1,001 words, the summary contains 207 words. Saved 79%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] kiithwarrior@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Maybe AI can finish Winds of Winter for him

[–] Overzeetop@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

Can’t be any worse than season 8.

[–] leftzero@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

Is this bot going to get sued by boomer luddites, too?

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[–] jasondj@ttrpg.network 5 points 1 year ago

We are at the point now that we could invent Artificial Intelligence and develop it to a point that it could write the final GoT booK faster than GRRM, and better than HBO.

[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

If I tried to publish a fan game using the source code of Mega Man Battle network, Capcom would be on my ass if you train your artificial intelligence off of the writing styles of popular authors and they don't see a lick? They should be on yours

[–] GarbageShoot@hexbear.net 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Martin is exactly the person this threatens, because what he puts out is ultimately a type of slop. When you are committed to the "gritty realism" tenant of how anyone can die and plot lines might just become irrelevant, sabotaging any coherent notion of themes or meaning beyond that basic premise, what you are left with is basically just fake history and fake politics, a more elaborate version of putting army men and OCs on a map and just kind of vomitting meaningless worldbuilding details and "lore" about them fighting until enough people have died that you call it a book.

AI is largely incapable of effectively conveying themes except in the bluntest manner, but if all you need is to be willing to put writing violence, sexual pandering, arbitrary setting descriptions, and dramatic language, AI is more than up to that task, though you will still need to edit to fix contradictory details.

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