Copyright timesnownews
A federal judge recently referenced Game of Thrones while permitting class-action lawsuits against OpenAI to proceed. As reported by 'Business Insider', U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein ruled on Monday that ChatGPT-generated text imitating an instalment of 'A Song of Ice and Fire' could constitute a violation of George R.R. Martin’s copyright for his acclaimed book series. “A reasonable jury could find that the allegedly infringing outputs are substantially similar to plaintiffs’ works,” stated the Manhattan federal court ruling, as cited by the publication. In addition to Martin, several prominent authors such as Michael Chabon, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jia Tolentino, and Sarah Silverman have joined lawsuits against OpenAI and Microsoft. They allege that their copyrighted works were used without permission to train large language models, enabling AI to produce content that could be mistaken for the authors’ legally protected creations. As part of the lawsuit, Martin’s lawyers presented a ChatGPT prompt that led the AI to generate “an alternative sequel to A Clash of Kings [called] A Dance with Shadows,” a play on Martin’s own title, 'A Storm of Swords'. The chatbot then outlined storylines involving “the discovery of a novel kind of ‘ancient dragon-related magic’ and new claims to the Iron Throne from ‘a distant relative of the Targaryens’ named Lady Elara, as well as ‘a rogue sect of Children of the Forest.’” The results were considered sufficiently similar to Martin’s original work for the lawsuits to proceed on copyright infringement grounds, though the question of whether Microsoft and OpenAI are shielded under “fair use” remains unresolved. Sure, AI can write faster than Martin, but it is not Martin and will never replace Martin. We’d rather wait a few (more) years for his next book, thank you very much.
