Microsoft, OpenAI Face Class Action Copyright Infringement From Nonfiction Book Authors

Microsoft and OpenAI are sued by two nonfiction book authors after the alleged illegal copying of the writers' work to train its billion-dollar artificial intelligence system.

Microsoft, OpenAI Under New Copyright Infringement Issue

The lawsuit was filed on Friday in Manhattan federal court, just a few weeks after The New York Times sued the companies as well for copyright infringement. Writers Nicholas Basbanes and Nicholas Gage proposed to court a class action suit for the infringed copyrights.

According to the filing, the companies are responsible for including their books to train OpenAI's GPT large language model. Moreover, the companies also did not offer any compensation for using their materials for data training.

The potential class suit will represent all people in the U.S. who are authors or legally beneficial owners of copyrights for works that have been and are being used by the company to train their language models. It is expected to reach almost tens of thousands of people.

American Authors, Publication Seek Class Suit Against OpenAI, Microsoft

Aside from The New York Times, several prominent fiction writers also reached out to the Manhattan federal court for the same issue. George R.R. Martin, Jonathan Franzen, and Michael Connelly, previously sued and requested to represent fiction writers in a case.

"For some reason, companies seem to devalue the work of writers," lawyer of Basbanes and Gage, Mike Richter, said. Both writers are also prominent in their field with their works being acknowledged publicly by big publications and politicians.

While Microsoft and OpenAI are yet to comment on the new case, the ChatGPT company stated previously that it respected the rights of content creators and is "committed to working with them."