OpenAI, the maker of the popular artificial intelligence-powered chatbot ChatGPT, has been sued by authors including comedian Sarah Silverman and science fiction and horror author Paul Tremblay, who accused the company of misusing books to train ChatGPT. The authors claim that OpenAI’s ChatGPT relies on their works for its training dataset without their permission.

In the case of Tremblay v. OpenAI Inc, Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad (the “plaintiffs”) assert that in furtherance of the training of the large language model that powers ChatGPT, OpenAI has made use of large amounts of data, including the text of books that they have authored without their authorization, thereby engaging in direct copyright infringement, violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and unfair competition. The case was filed on June 28, 2023, in a federal court in Northern California.

In the case of Silverman v. OpenAI Inc, Sarah Silverman and two other authors, Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey, claim that OpenAI’s ChatGPT relies on their works for its training dataset. The authors, who are seeking class-action status, say they did not consent to their works being used in this way but they were “ingested and used to train ChatGPT.” The case was filed on July 7, 2023, in a federal court in Northern California.

OpenAI took aim at what it called "ancillary" claims in the lawsuits on August 28, 2023, telling the court that the text ChatGPT creates does not violate the authors' rights in their books. The company asked the court to dismiss the charges of vicarious copyright infringement, unfair competition negligence and unjust enrichment. OpenAI did not ask for a dismissal of the direct copyright infringement count, but stated the intent to resolve the matter at a later stage of the case.

These lawsuits are not the first time OpenAI has faced legal challenges over its use of copyrighted material. Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI have also been targeted in a proposed class action lawsuit alleging that the companies’ creation of AI-powered coding assistant GitHub Copilot relies on “software piracy on an unprecedented scale.” The key question in the lawsuit is whether open-source code can be reproduced by AI without attached licenses.

The legal implications of using generative AI are still unclear, particularly in relation to copyright infringement, ownership of AI-generated works, and unlicensed content in training data. Courts are currently trying to establish how intellectual property laws should be applied to generative AI, and several cases have already been filed. To protect themselves from these risks, companies that use generative AI need to ensure that they are in compliance with the law, such as the DMCA, and take steps to mitigate potential risks, such as ensuring they use training data free from unlicensed content and developing ways to show provenance of generated content.

It remains to be seen how these lawsuits will play out and what impact they will have on the broader world of AI. Despite the potential legal challenges hampering AI-powered tools, Microsoft has pledged billions of dollars to extend a long-term partnership with OpenAI.