Artificial intelligences continue to cause trouble. Three American authors have filed lawsuits against OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement. Authors Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey, along with comedian and writer Sarah Silverman, have taken legal action against these major companies after discovering that their respective AIs have used their copyrighted works without consent.
In particular, the lawsuits allege that ChatGPT from OpenAI and LLaMA created by Meta were trained on a dataset acquired illegally, which included works by these authors. The sources of these datasets are known as “shadow libraries,” and the complaint includes names of websites such as Library Genesis, Bibliotik, and Z-Library, which are “readily available in bulk through torrent systems.”
Regarding the lawsuit against OpenAI, the three authors have provided evidence that if asked to summarize their books, ChatGPT will do so without any issue and without displaying any information regarding the copyright of the works. As evidence, the authors have submitted the summaries generated by ChatGPT for their works: ‘Bedwetter’ by Silverman, ‘Ararat’ by Golden, and ‘Sandman Slim’ by Kadrey.
Furthermore, in the lawsuit against Meta, the authors point out the sources used by Zuckerberg’s company to extract training datasets. One of these sources, called The Pile, has been compiled by the company EleutherAI, which claims that this dataset is derived from “a copy of the contents of the private tracker Bibliotik” which, like other “shadow libraries,” are “blatantly illegal,” according to the complainants.
The authors state in both lawsuits that they “did not consent to the use of their copyrighted books as training material” for artificial intelligence, and they are seeking damages, restitution of profits, and other compensations.
AI has indeed become a major concern for Hollywood writers, who recently held a protest to advocate for better working conditions. Furthermore, AI systems have faced numerous legal challenges in recent months. ChatGPT was sued last month for defamation, after spreading false information, and Midjourney was also sued earlier this year for copyright infringement by artists. These cases highlight the growing legal and ethical complexities surrounding the use of AI technologies in creative industries.
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