THE CLONE WARS: They are also suing the Meta group, which it accuses of having done the same for its own generative AI software, LLaMA
They accuse him of using the content of their books to power the chatbot. Three authors have sued OpenAI, creator of the generative artificial intelligence (AI) interface ChatGPT, AFP learned on Monday from a judicial source. They also filed a lawsuit against Meta, which is alleged to have done the same for its own generative AI software, LLaMA.
The humorist Sarah Silverman, author of the autobiography The Bedwetter, as well as Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey, two writers known in the United States in particular for their works of fantasy, asked a federal judge in San Francisco to qualify this procedure in group action, which would allow others to join in.
“Very accurate” content
The three authors have no direct proof that OpenAI actually used their books to feed its language model, i.e. to create software, ChatGPT, capable of responding to requests in everyday language and generating text. But they indicate, according to the document of summons seen by AFP, to have asked ChatGPT to propose a summary of the works and to have obtained, in return, “very accurate” content in conformity with the story of each book, even if “ some details are wrong”. Since ChatGPT is not fed in real-time directly from Internet sources and relies on a limited amount of information, unlike Bard, Google‘s interface, these summaries would mean that elements relating to these books have been entered into the software.
Concerning the interface of Meta, LLaMA, the three writers point out that the Menlo Park group admitted having used online bookstores, in particular Bibliotik, which offers digitized books without the authorization of their authors or their publishers. Unlike OpenAI, Meta has only given access to LLaMA to a limited number of users and has not yet announced a launch for the general public. The three authors do not mention, unlike ChatGPT, having asked LLaMA to produce a summary of their works.
Other legal actions
At the end of June, two other writers, the Canadian Mona Awad and the American Paul Tremblay ( The Cabin at the Ends of the World) had already summoned OpenAI before the same court. Asked by AFP, OpenAI declined to comment and Meta did not respond immediately.
These legal actions are in line with other procedures that aim to police the practices of generative AI software developers, who are fed with immense amounts of data, some of which are protected by intellectual property law. In January, artists thus attacked, in the form of group action, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and DreamUp, three AI models formed thanks to billions of images collected on the Internet.
