Top authors who filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, claiming the unauthorized use of their novels to train the company’s AI chatbot, have faced a setback as a federal judge has trimmed down the scope of their case. U.S. District Judge Araceli MartÃnez-OlguÃn recently dismissed a claim accusing OpenAI of unfair business practices for using works by authors like Sarah Silverman, Paul Tremblay, and Ta-Nehisi Coates without consent or compensation to power its AI system.
While the writers’ primary claim for direct copyright infringement remains intact, other claims for negligence, unjust enrichment, and vicarious copyright infringement were previously dismissed in February. The court also denied dismissal of the unfair competition law claim, but after the lawsuits were consolidated, OpenAI made a second attempt at dismissal, which was ultimately upheld by the judge.
In her ruling, MartÃnez-OlguÃn determined that the Copyright Act preempts state law claims related to works falling within the subject matter of copyright. Since the authors argued that OpenAI used their copyrighted works to train its ChatGPT chatbot without permission, the state law claim was found to be within the domain of copyright law.
The legal battle between OpenAI and the authors continues to escalate, with various trade groups, artists, and publishers joining the fray. The controversy centers around the use of published works to train OpenAI’s human-like chatbot, ChatGPT, sparking debates over copyright infringement and fair compensation for creators.
