In an order issued on February. 12, a federal judge at California court has partially dismissed a copyright case against OpenAI brought by several authors.
The case against OpenAI combines complaints filed by Silverman, Christopher Golden, Richard Kadrey, Paul Tremblay, and Mona Awad. It made six claims as listed below:
- direct copyright infringement
- vicarious infringement
- violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by removing copyright management information
- unfair competition
- negligence
- unjust enrichment
OpenAI asked to dismiss all counts but the main complaint: direct copyright infringement.
In the ruling, Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín threw out claims on vicarious copyright infringement, DMCA violations, negligence, and unjust enrichment. The court did not believe the plaintiffs’ claims of illegal business practices and fraudulent conduct related to unfair competition. It upheld the unfair competition claim that OpenAI did not seek their permission to use their work for commercial profit.
Tremblay first filed the lawsuit in June, as reported by Reuters. Silverman’s complaint also listed Meta — through its large language model Llama 2 — as a defendant. The lawsuits claimed that OpenAI illegally copied their copyrighted work to train the large language model powering ChatGPT. If prompted to summarize the books written by the plaintiffs, they said ChatGPT generated accurate summaries, which they claim shows an intention to violate copyright.
OpenAI is facing multiple copyright infringement lawsuits from authors, including a proposed class action lawsuit from the Authors Guild and well-known authors like George R.R. Martin and John Grisham.
This isn’t the end of the legal battle. The authors have the chance to file an amended complaint to correct any shortcomings, should they wish to proceed with the dismissed claims. Finally, it’s worth reiterating that the direct copyright infringement claim wasn’t covered by OpenAI’s motion to dismiss, so that will move forward as well. As will many of the other AI copyright lawsuits.
Navkiran Dhaliwal is a seasoned content writer with 10+ years of experience. When she's not writing, she can be found cooking up a storm or spending time with her dog, Rain.
