Two US authors sued OpenAI claiming the company used their copyrighted books without permission to train ChatGPT, alleging copyright infringement through unauthorized data mining of thousands of books including from illegal shadow libraries.
Massachusetts-based writers Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad filed a proposed class action lawsuit against OpenAI in San Francisco federal court, alleging that the company misused their copyrighted works to train ChatGPT without permission. The authors claim ChatGPT mined data from thousands of books without authorization, infringing on their copyrights. The complaint estimates that OpenAI's training data incorporated over 300,000 books, including content from illegal 'shadow libraries' that offer copyrighted books without permission. The lawsuit notes that books are a 'key ingredient' in training because they provide the 'best examples of high-quality longform writing.' As evidence of infringement, the authors demonstrated that ChatGPT could generate 'very accurate' summaries of their books, indicating their works appeared in the training database. Awad is known for novels including '13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl' and 'Bunny,' while Tremblay's works include 'The Cabin at the End of the World,' which was adapted into an M. Night Shyamalan film. The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages on behalf of a nationwide class of copyright owners whose works OpenAI allegedly misused. This case is part of several legal challenges filed over material used to train AI systems, with defendants typically arguing fair use of copyrighted material.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
AI systems that memorize and leak sensitive personal data or infer private information about individuals without their consent. Unexpected or unauthorized sharing of data and information can compromise user expectation of privacy, assist identity theft, or cause loss of confidential intellectual property.
Human
Due to a decision or action made by humans
Intentional
Due to an expected outcome from pursuing a goal
Pre-deployment
Occurring before the AI is deployed