The class of plaintiff authors suing OpenAI for copyright infringement has faced a setback in their case. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California recently ruled against the majority of their claims, rejecting the broad assertion that every output of the OpenAI Language Model is an infringing derivative work. However, the court has given the plaintiffs another opportunity to address the deficiencies in their pleadings.
The named plaintiffs, including Paul Tremblay, Sarah Silverman, and Michael Chabon, have filed lawsuits claiming that companies associated with Large Language Model tools like ChatGPT have infringed their copyrights by using their original works as training material for the AI models. The court’s decision to consolidate the cases and require the plaintiffs to amend their complaints follows a similar ruling in a related case involving visual art.
The court dismissed five of the plaintiffs’ six claims but allowed a portion of one claim to remain, giving the plaintiffs until March 13, 2024, to file an amended complaint. The outcome of this latest development will be of interest not only to the parties involved but also to other stakeholders, as similar cases are pending in New York.
The Tremblay plaintiffs will need to reframe their claims to address the court’s critiques and continue their legal battle against OpenAI. By following the court’s guidance in amending their complaint, the plaintiffs will have another opportunity to strengthen their arguments and seek redress for alleged copyright infringement.
