Renowned comedian Sarah Silverman, along with authors Richard Kadrey and Christopher Golden, have taken legal action against Meta and OpenAI for allegedly infringing their copyrights. The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in San Francisco, accuses the companies of using the content from their books without permission to train artificial intelligence language models. This development comes as creators of large language models face lawsuits for utilizing copyrighted material to enhance user experience.
The lawsuit against Meta claims that leaked information about the company’s AI business reveals unauthorized use of copyrighted material. On the other hand, the lawsuit against OpenAI alleges that the summaries produced by the ChatGPT chatbot indicate that the bot was trained using copyrighted content from the plaintiffs. Although these summaries may contain some errors, they suggest that ChatGPT has access to specific details from the copyrighted works, a fact that the artists argue demonstrates infringement.
The lawsuit against Meta asserts that the authors’ books were included in the data sets Meta used to train its LLaMA models. However, it claims that this data was sourced illicitly. Meta’s LLaMA model relies on various data sets, including ThePile, which the complaint alleges contains content copied from the Bibliotik private tracker. The lawsuit describes Bibliotik as one of the well-known shadow libraries that engage in blatantly illegal activities.
Last week, OpenAI faced two additional lawsuits. One was filed by authors Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad, while the other was a class action lawsuit accusing ChatGPT and Dall-e of violating the privacy and copyright of millions of internet users.
These legal actions highlight the growing concern among content creators regarding the unauthorized use of their copyrighted works by artificial intelligence platforms. The plaintiffs in these cases are seeking compensation for the alleged infringement of their copyrights.
Overall, this marks a significant moment as language model creators face early lawsuits over the unauthorized incorporation of copyrighted material. The outcome of these lawsuits will undoubtedly shape how AI platforms utilize copyrighted content in the future, as the demand for realistic AI responses continues to grow.
