The core of the lawsuit, which is Silverman's claim of direct copyright infringement for copying millions of books across the internet without permission, remains. The judge noted that the unfair competition claim could be preempted by the federal Copyright Act, but since OpenAI did not raise preemption, the court did not consider it. This ruling is similar to one from a copyright case that Silverman brought against Meta Platforms Inc. over its AI model LLaMA. OpenAI is also facing copyright lawsuits from dozens of authors nationwide, including a lawsuit from The Authors Guild and The New York Times.
Key takeaways:
- OpenAI Inc. is required to face a claim that it violated California's unfair competition law by using copyrighted books from comedian Sarah Silverman and other authors to train ChatGPT without permission.
- US District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín dismissed several other legal claims from Silverman and her co-plaintiffs, but allowed them to amend their proposed class action by March 13 to fix the defects in the complaint.
- The judge suggested that the unfair competition claim could be preempted by the federal Copyright Act, but as OpenAI did not raise preemption, the court did not consider it.
- OpenAI is facing copyright lawsuits from dozens of authors around the country, including a lawsuit from The Authors Guild and The New York Times for copyright infringement.