Bestselling Authors George R.R. Martin, John Grisham, and Jodi Picoult Sue OpenAI for Copyright Infringement

Bestselling authors George R.R. Martin, John Grisham, and Jodi Picoult are among 17 authors suing OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, for copyright infringement. The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York on Tuesday, claims that OpenAI fed their books into its “large language models” without permission.

The complaint alleges that OpenAI’s ChatGPT program is a “massive commercial enterprise” that is reliant upon “systematic theft on a mass scale.” The authors argue that OpenAI’s use of their works is a “flagrant and harmful infringement” of their registered copyrights.

OpenAI is a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence research lab that has been developing language models for natural language processing. The company’s ChatGPT program is a natural language processing system that is designed to generate human-like conversations.

The lawsuit is the latest legal challenge facing OpenAI over the data it collects and uses to create the algorithm that underpins ChatGPT. The Authors Guild, which is representing the authors, has argued that OpenAI’s use of the authors’ works without permission is a violation of copyright law.

The Authors Guild has called on OpenAI to cease using the authors’ works without permission and to pay damages for the alleged copyright infringement. OpenAI has yet to respond to the lawsuit. It is unclear how the case will proceed, but the authors are hoping for a resolution that will protect their works from being used without permission.