Sancton, who spent five years and significant funds researching for his book, argues that the commercial success of ChatGPT is only possible due to the alleged copyright violations. The lawsuit seeks statutory damages, restitution, disgorgement of profits, and injunctive relief on behalf of Sancton and other authors whose registered copyrights have allegedly been used by OpenAI and Microsoft. This follows a similar lawsuit filed against OpenAI in California federal court a few months ago.
Key takeaways:
- Plaintiff Julian Sancton has filed a class action lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that they steal the work of nonfiction authors to train their AI models without permission or compensation, in violation of the Copyright Act.
- The lawsuit was filed in New York federal court and claims that the defendants have made commercial reproductions of millions of copyrighted works to train their AI models.
- The defendants are accused of creating and monetizing ChatGPT chatbots that can generate text mimicking a human response, using the reproduced copyrighted material.
- Sancton is seeking statutory damages, restitution, disgorgement of profits and injunctive relief on behalf of himself and other authors whose works have allegedly been reproduced and used by OpenAI and Microsoft.