Following a November lawsuit by a group of non-fiction authors accusing OpenAI and Microsoft of unauthorized use of intellectual property to train OpenAI’s generative AI technology, additional non-fiction writers, including journalists Nicholas A. Basbanes and Nicholas Gage, are now filing a proposed class action lawsuit. They allege “massive and deliberate theft of copyrighted works” for the training of OpenAI’s GPT large language models (LLM).
The complaint argues that professional writers, who often self-fund their projects, face limited capital for research compared to defendants with “ready access to billions in capital” who allegedly “simply stole” copyrighted works to build a billion-dollar commercial industry. The authors claim that using copyrighted works is a “deliberate strategy” by the companies to maximize profit margins, and suggest alternative financing options, such as profit sharing, were disregarded in favor of “decided to steal” instead.
Basbanes and Gage seek to represent a class of writers whose copyrighted work has allegedly been systematically pilfered, seeking damages up to $150,000 per infringed work, along with a permanent injunction to prevent the recurrence of such harms. The lawsuit adds to a growing list of legal challenges faced by OpenAI, including claims by fiction authors and The New York Times for unauthorized use of their content in AI training. OpenAI has previously mentioned engaging in “productive conversations” regarding the lawsuits.
