‘Game of Thrones’ Author Scores a Point in Lawsuit Against Artificial Intelligence

A federal judge has ruled that a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by George R.R. Martin and other authors against OpenAI can proceed.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, these authors allege that the developer of ChatGPT used their works to train its artificial intelligence systems. This decision represents an early victory for creators in the legal battle against AI developers over the use of copyrighted material for training large language models.

U.S. District Judge Araceli Saldaña, in a ruling on Monday, largely denied OpenAI’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit. While she dismissed claims of vicarious copyright infringement, negligence, and unjust enrichment, she allowed the core claim of direct copyright infringement to move forward. The judge stated that the authors’ complaint plausibly alleges that OpenAI’s language models are themselves infringing derivative works.

This lawsuit, filed by the Authors Guild, includes prominent authors such as John Grisham, Jonathan Franzen, Jodi Picoult, and George Saunders. They claim that their books were copied without permission to train language models that now generate texts that compete with their own works.

The central issue in the lawsuit is whether the outputs of large language models, which are trained on vast amounts of text and data, constitute derivative works. A key part of OpenAI’s defense is the argument of fair use, which has not yet been addressed in the case.

This legal battle is part of a series of lawsuits filed by creators against AI companies, and its outcome could have significant implications for the future of artificial intelligence and copyright law.