One of the controversies that arose with the appearance of ChatGPT is with respect to intellectual property. One of the first discussions was regarding the replacement of voice actors in video games by artificial intelligence, and now it is happening with the use of books.
Two writers and an actress have filed lawsuits against OpenAI, the company behind the popular artificial intelligence chatbot. This opens the debate about using content to train language models. The claim of the writers in question is for the unauthorized use of literary works to train ChatGPT to generate new texts.
These demands were joined by a communiqué from more than 8,000 writers along the same lines. In this communiqué, all artificial intelligence systems are warned and criticized for the use of their works without any type of authorization.
What is the writers’ claim against ChatGPT?
The statement signed by writers against ChatGPT includes the participation of Margaret Atwood known for The Handmaid’s Tale. In addition to her, writers such as Nora Roberts, Suzanne Collins and Jennifer Egan have joined the list. This criticism of the use of books in the training of artificial intelligence programs was prompted by the Author’s Guild organization. According to its director, Mary Rasenberger, millions of books, essays, among others, provide the fodder for artificial intelligence-based language models. He also added that these technologies owe their existence to the writers, who are not remunerated in any way. “They are spending billions of dollars to develop AI technology, it is only fair that we are compensated for using our writings.”
The release also calls on AI leaders to mitigate the damage by taking the following steps:
- Obtain permission to use the copyrighted material.
- Compensate writers fairly for past use of their work in artificial intelligence programs.
- Compensate writers fairly for the use of works in the production of artificial intelligence.
The objective of implementing these measures is to achieve a healthy ecosystem for authors, as defined by Rasenberger.
What are the claims filed by the writers?
The lawsuit in question was filed by Mona Awad, Paul Tremblay and Sara Silverman, the latter also an actress. The three writers filed the lawsuits because they have not authorized the use of their works for ChatGPT training. The use of these works makes it possible to generate summaries of them. In addition to this, there is also the possibility of making new works with the style of each of the writers, learned on the basis of the books used for training. According to Tremblay and Awad’s lawsuit, the company OpenAI was enriched, but improperly, since it used material that is protected by copyright.
Both cases, the communiqué and the lawsuits filed are the starting point of a controversy that has already been served. Just like writers, many other people can litigate against ChatGPT and OpenAI for the use of their proprietary works for training.
