On January 5, OpenAI and its investor, Microsoft, were sued for copyright infringement in a class action lawsuit filed by two nonfiction book authors, Nicholas Basbanes and Nicholas Gage. They claimed that the companies unlawfully utilized their copyrighted works to train their AI models, including the widely used chatbot ChatGPT.

Filed in Manhattan federal court, this lawsuit follows a similar complaint from The New York Times against Microsoft and OpenAI. Microsoft is not only an investor in OpenAI but also a supplier.

The New York Times claims that when questioned about recent occurrences, ChatGPT may produce exact passages from New York Times articles that are only available with a paid subscription, implying that people can access New York Times content without paying for it, resulting in a loss of subscription income and advertising clicks for the newspaper's website.

Basbanes and Gage seek to represent a class of writers whose copyrighted works were allegedly used without permission. They emphasized that the defendants publicly acknowledged the need to compensate copyright owners, as highlighted in The New York Times lawsuit seeking billions of dollars in damages.

The lawsuit aims to cover a broad class of plaintiffs, estimated to be tens of thousands of people, seeking damages of up to $150,000 for each infringed work. In September, a group of fiction writers, including George R.R. Martin and Jonathan Franzen, sued OpenAI for similar reasons, focusing on a class of fiction writers.

The plaintiffs' lawyer, Mike Richter, argued that OpenAI's use of copyrighted material without permission is outrageous, comparing it to devaluing the work of writers. Richter stated that their new lawsuit includes a wider group of people and, for various reasons, should be considered the primary class action claim on the issue.

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Gage is a reporter who wrote for publications like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. His memoir 'Eleni' received a movie adaptation starring John Malkovich. Gage has also written other books and got credit as an executive producer for 'The Godfather III.'

Basbanes has been a journalist for a long time and has written many books about books and people who collect them. One of his notable works is 'A Gentle Madness.'

OpenAI, in response to the Times' lawsuit, expressed its respect for content creators' rights and remains committed to collaborating with them to reap the benefits of AI technology. Talks between the two parties are going well, as stated by OpenAI. With the new lawsuit, OpenAI aims to discover a way to work together that benefits both parties.

The legal case emphasizes the need to respect content creators' rights in the age of advanced AI. Ongoing disputes reveal the intricate connection between AI, copyright issues, and the obligation of tech firms to compensate creators. Microsoft and OpenAI have not responded to the lawsuit yet, and the legal process is likely to influence discussions on the ethical use of copyrighted material in AI development. 

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