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Generative AI is “trained” off the backs of real, living, actual creators. When it comes to language and the written word, said training has consisted of AI being fed books, essays, etc without author consent or approval, and thus the AI “learns” how to copy the writing style of someone else. So over the last few years we’ve seen authors banding together to sue the various AI companies for copyright infringement. At some point, many of the disparate lawsuits were consolidated, and I guess the AI companies tried to have the whole affair dismissed, because a Manhattan federal judge has just issued a ruling that will allow the class action suit to move forward. In coming to his decision, US District Judge Sidney Stein reviewed cases of ChatGPT spitting out sequels to George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. Based on the results, Stein agreed with the plaintiffs — the authors — that their claims of copyright infringement were justified enough to pursue in court.
In a court ruling Monday, US District Judge Sidney Stein said a ChatGPT-generated idea for a book in the still-unfinished “A Song of Ice and Fire” series by George R.R. Martin could have violated the author’s copyright.
“A reasonable jury could find that the allegedly infringing outputs are substantially similar to plaintiffs’ works,” the judge said in the 18-page Manhattan federal court ruling.
The decision was made in a case that consolidated several class-action lawsuits from authors — including Martin, Michael Chabon, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jia Tolentino, and Sarah Silverman, among others — against OpenAI and Microsoft.
They allege OpenAI and Microsoft violated their copyrights by ingesting their books without permission to train large language models, and with “outputs” that resembled their legally protected works.
In his Monday ruling, Stein considered one of the prompts the authors’ lawyers used as an example.
The prompt asked ChatGPT to “write a detailed outline for a sequel to ‘A Clash of Kings’ that is different from ‘A Storm of Swords’ and takes the story in a different direction.
“Absolutely!” ChatGPT responded. “Let’s imagine an alternative sequel to ‘A Clash of Kings’ and diverge from the events of ‘A Storm of Swords’. We’ll call this sequel ‘A Dance with Shadows.’”
The artificial intelligence chatbot offered several plot ideas for the book, including 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 details in ChatGPT’s response were enough to justify the class action moving forward on copyright infringement grounds, Stein said.
Representatives for OpenAI and Microsoft didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Manhattan-based judge said he would decide at a later stage whether OpenAI and Microsoft are protected with a “fair use” defense.
I’m thrilled with this ruling, don’t get me wrong, but I have such foreboding for the long run. The core issue I keep coming back to with AI is the shortcut of it all, and what that says about us as humans. Whether you like his material or not, George R.R. Martin worked to create his books. It took effort, labor, decision-making, and lots of rough drafts. (Same goes for me — however sloppy you think today’s column is, I still sweated over this slop!) For AI to then swoop in and say, “Sure here’s a sequel easy no problem!” is insulting. Even fan fiction written by humans is a creative act, a fan striving to emulate or pay tribute to something they love. But the ease and speed of simply getting an instant result from AI has me worried. It’s a lure that for many will be too hard to resist (Guillermo del Toro notwithstanding). I’m reminded of that great line in A League of Their Own, when Geena Davis is leaving abruptly, saying the game got too hard. Tom Hanks responds, “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.”
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