Authors suing OpenAI seek to dismiss copycat lawsuits in New York

Michael Chabon, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Sarah Silverman, who sued an artificial intelligence (AI) company for copyright infringement, urged a California court to dismiss parallel lawsuits filed by The New York Times (NYT), John Grisham and others. in New York.

In a court filing filed Thursday, Feb. 8, the authors argued that allowing copycat lawsuits — the NYTs case and previously launched by the Writers Guild through Grisham and others — would lead to “inconsistent decisions in overlapping class actions” and a misuse of court resources.

Comedian and author Sarah Silverman and two other authors, Richard Kadry and Christopher Golden, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI's ChatGPT in July 2023. The lawsuit states that when ChatGPT publishes a summary of the author's work, it refers to the training as copyrighted material.

The California plaintiffs also said the New York lawsuits allowed OpenAI to engage in “forum marketing” and “progressive gaming.”

Authors in California informed the court that New York's cases are similar to theirs, suggesting that OpenAI would seek more favorable conditions in New York after the California court rejected its proposed litigation schedule.

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Several copyright groups have sued writers, visual artists and music publishers for using technology companies such as Microsoft-backed OpenAI to train Generative AI systems.

OpenAI, Meta and others argue that their AI training is considered transformative and falls within the copyright doctrine. Meta pointed out that it is similar to legal precedents such as Google Book Copying for Search if Fair Use was filed against Authors Guild and Google in 2015.

In September 2023, a professional organization of published writers led by the New York-based Authors Guild, including George RR Martin, John Grisham, Jody Peacoat, George Saunders and Jonathan Franzen, joined a class-action lawsuit against OpenAI. Misusing copyrighted material in training his AI models.

More complaints from the Newt followed. The suit departs from both the US Constitution and copyright law to protect the NYT's original journalism.

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