Comedian Sarah Silverman and authors Richard Kadrey and Christopher Golden have filed copyright infringement lawsuits against Meta Platforms and OpenAI, alleging that their content was used without permission to train artificial intelligence language models.
These lawsuits, filed in a federal court, assert that Meta and OpenAI unlawfully exploited their intellectual property. The legal action seeks to hold these tech giants accountable for the alleged infringement, emphasizing the importance of protecting creators’ rights in the rapidly evolving landscape of AI technology.
Legal action against Meta Platforms and OpenAI
The class action lawsuits were filed in the federal court of San Francisco on Friday, putting Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, and OpenAI, supported by Microsoft Corp, in the spotlight. The plaintiffs claim that the companies utilized copyrighted material from their books to train chatbots and develop large language models.
According to the plaintiffs, Meta and OpenAI employed their works without proper authorization, violating their copyright protections. The language models developed by these companies are designed to simulate human conversation and are widely used for various automated tasks.
Silverman, Kadrey, and Golden claim that Meta Platforms has been using their work unlawfully in their case against the corporation due to the disclosure of information about its artificial intelligence operations. They claim their copyrighted content was used to train the chatbots without obtaining the necessary permissions.
The lawsuit against OpenAI focuses on ChatGPT, a company-developed product. The plaintiffs state that the summaries generated by ChatGPT, although containing inaccuracies, indicate that the bot was trained using their copyrighted content. This suggests that the model retained knowledge of their specific works from the training dataset.
The first lawsuit brought against ChatGPT that concerns copyright was filed on June 28 by award-winning authors Monda Awad and Paul Tremblay against the creators of the artificial intelligence chatbot. The lawsuit claims that the company breached copyright laws by “training” their AI dataset with their books without the author’s explicit consent. The lawsuits come amid long-standing concerns from creatives as AI tools are able to create texts and images in seconds, all through their machine learning algorithms made through the works of existing pieces of media.
Legal ramifications of copyright infringement
These copyright infringement lawsuits remind developers of the legal risks they face when incorporating copyrighted material into their chatbot applications. Chatbots rely on vast amounts of data to deliver accurate responses, but using copyrighted content without permission can lead to legal repercussions.
Lawsuits Demand Unspecified Financial Compensation for Alleged Infringement, on the basis of a nationwide class of copyright owners allegedly having their works stolen. By filing these lawsuits, Silverman, Kadrey, and Golden aim to protect their intellectual property rights and ensure that proper permissions and compensation are granted for the use of their content.
As of the Sunday deadline, Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, and OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, have remained conspicuously silent, failing to provide any official response to the copyright infringement lawsuits filed against them. The absence of their comments has left legal experts and industry observers eagerly awaiting their response, which is expected to shed light on their stance, potential legal defenses, and the implications these lawsuits may have on the future of AI language models.
Is it ethical to have an AI entity write your brief?
Litigation attorney Nicholas Boyd authored an article for the Daily Report exploring the ethics of using artificial intelligence (AI) in legal writing. He observed that AI’s legal writing capabilities have improved, but are not yet on par with those of experienced attorneys. Using AI in legal writing may be a violation of ethical rules, including the duty of competence, the duty of confidentiality, and assisting in the unauthorized practice of law. Mr. Boyd recommends that attorneys use AI with caution when working with court or client-facing documents and always exercise competent legal judgment in the best interests of their clients.
In the same manner, brushing away ethics, in the guise of expediency, or for the development of science, or for whatever reason the creators of these devices or innovations put up in their defense, is an indefensible position. The burden of proof is with the aggrieved party, but once ownership is proven, the accused should face the full brunt of the law. Considering the profits these corporations are making, the amelioration won’t make a dent in their incomes. The greater concern would be if the evident abuse of others’ personal properties would lead to stricter regulation of AI processes.
Stricter guidelines and regulations for copyrighted material
The outcome of these copyright infringement lawsuits against Meta and OpenAI could have significant implications for the development and use of AI language models. It may lead to stricter guidelines and regulations regarding the usage of copyrighted material and encourage developers to seek explicit permission before utilizing such content.
Comedian Sarah Silverman and authors Richard Kadrey, and Christopher Golden have taken legal action against Meta Platforms and OpenAI, claiming that their copyrighted content was used without permission to train artificial intelligence language models. The lawsuits highlight the legal risks faced by developers of chatbots when incorporating copyrighted material into their applications. The outcome of these cases could shape the future of AI language model development and usage, impacting the way copyrighted content is used in training such models.
