On Friday, the Joseph Saveri Law Firm filed US federal class-action lawsuits on behalf of Sarah Silverman and other authors against OpenAI and Meta, accusing the companies of illegally using copyrighted material to train AI language models such as ChatGPT and LLaMA.
Other authors represented include Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey, and an earlier class-action lawsuit filed by the same firm on June 28 included authors Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad. Each lawsuit alleges violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, unfair competition laws, and negligence.
[...] Authors claim that by utilizing "flagrantly illegal" data sets, OpenAI allegedly infringed copyrights of Silverman's book The Bedwetter, Golden's Ararat, and Kadrey's Sandman Slime. And Meta allegedly infringed copyrights of the same three books, as well as "several" other titles from Golden and Kadrey.
[...] Authors are already upset that companies seem to be unfairly profiting off their copyrighted materials, and the Meta lawsuit noted that any unfair profits currently gained could further balloon, as "Meta plans to make the next version of LLaMA commercially available." In addition to other damages, the authors are asking for restitution of alleged profits lost.
"Much of the material in the training datasets used by OpenAI and Meta comes from copyrighted works—including books written by plaintiffs—that were copied by OpenAI and Meta without consent, without credit, and without compensation," Saveri and Butterick wrote in their press release.
(Score: 2) by sigterm on Sunday July 16 2023, @06:49PM (1 child)
Where did you get the idea that I was arguing against copyright law? I'm not.
Leaving aside the obvious copyright infringement that is wholesale reproduction of unaltered content, which is not being argued here: There is such a thing as "fair use." Unless ChatGPT is using the material in a non-novel way, and/or are creating a (derivative) product that takes market share from the original content, they'll have a hard time arguing that their copyright is being violated.
Plaintiff: "Your Honor, defendant read/say the content we distributed on the Internet, and is now creating derivative works that only vaguely resemble the original!" Defendant: "Yes, we are." Judge: "That's perfectly allowed. Next case!"
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday July 22 2023, @09:04PM
How much and to what purpose? Even if it's a single sentence, if the author isn't credited, it's plagiarism. Fair use credits the original author. If he copies five paragraphs and puts "a passage from [name of work]:", or indented with a footnote after it is fair use. A sentence without credit is plagiarism, period. If the computer credits all those it copies with what it has copied, it may just be kosher. But I wouldn't bet on it.
The more I learn, the more I realize how abysmally ignorant I am.