ChatGPT Maker OpenAI Sued by More Writers for Copyright Infringement Over AI Training

A group of U.S. authors, including Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon, has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in federal court in San Francisco. They accuse the Microsoft-backed program of using their writing without permission to train its AI-powered chatbot, ChatGPT. Alongside Chabon, playwright David Henry Hwang, and authors Matthew Klam, Rachel Louise Snyder, and Ayelet Waldman claim in their lawsuit that OpenAI copied their works to teach ChatGPT to respond to human text prompts.

Chabon’s representatives directed inquiries about the lawsuit to the authors’ attorneys, who, along with OpenAI’s representatives, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday. This lawsuit is at least the third proposed copyright-infringement class action filed by authors against OpenAI, which is backed by Microsoft. Other companies, including Microsoft, Meta Platforms, and Stability AI, have also faced lawsuits from copyright owners over the use of their work in AI training.

OpenAI and similar companies have argued that AI training constitutes fair use of copyrighted material sourced from the internet.

Earlier this year, ChatGPT became the fastest-growing consumer application in history, reaching 100 million monthly active users in January, before being surpassed by Meta’s Threads app. The new lawsuit asserts that works like books, plays, and articles are especially valuable for training ChatGPT as they represent “high-quality, long-form writing.”

The authors claim that their writing was included in ChatGPT’s training data without permission, enabling the system to accurately summarize their works and generate text that mimics their styles. The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages and an order to stop OpenAI’s “unlawful and unfair business practices.”