On Friday, two nonfiction authors, Nicholas Basbanes and Nicholas Gage, initiated a class action lawsuit against OpenAI and its financial backer, Microsoft, in Manhattan federal court. According to the complaint, the companies had infringed on the authors’ copyrights by incorporating several of their books into the data used to train OpenAI’s GPT language model. Neither Microsoft nor OpenAI had responded to requests for comment on the matter. This lawsuit follows others, initiated by both fiction and nonfiction authors, from Sarah Silverman to George R.R. Martin, against tech companies, as well as a suit from The New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft last week for the use of their journalists’ work in AI applications.
The idea that the internet has created a world of infinite possibilities is one that has become increasingly widespread. It is now widely accepted that the web has enabled us to access resources and information with unmatched convenience and speed. Moreover, the internet has enabled us to develop connections with people on a global scale. This has opened up countless opportunities for collaboration, entertainment, and education.