Two Authors Sue Microsoft, OpenAI Over Copyright Infringement

(RTTNews) - Two non-fiction book authors, Nicholas Basbanes and Nicholas Gage, have filed a complaint accusing Microsoft (MSFT) and OpenAI of allegedly stealing the copyrighted works of writers for training large language models.

The plaintiffs said that they filed the complaint on behalf of tens of thousands of authors or legal beneficiary owners of copyrights of works that have been used by the tech giants for building billion-dollar artificial systems.

The suit, which calls the defendants "no different than any other thief", seeks damages of up to $150,000 for each copyrighted work infringed by Microsoft and OpenAI. It further claims that OpenAI's large language models are trained by ingesting "massive amounts of book material."

Mike Richter, the lawyer representing Basbanes and Gage said, "For some reason, companies seem to devalue the work of writers."

Last week, the New York Times filed a similar copyright infringement case against Microsoft and OpenAI for using newspaper material to train large language models. The newspaper seeks billions of dollars in damages.

In response to the Times claim, OpenAI stated "We respect the rights of content creators and owners and are committed to working with them to ensure they benefit from AI technology and new revenue models." It further said, "We're hopeful that we will find a mutually beneficial way to work together, as we are doing with many other publishers."

Last year, many prominent American fiction authors including George R.R. Martin, Jonathan Franzen and Michael Connelly, sued the ChatGPT creator citing the same reason.