The Authors Guild along with a group of 17 authors that includes prominent names like John Grisham, Jodi Picoult, David Baldacci, and George R.R. Martin have filed a class-action lawsuit against OpenAI for copyright infringement of their works to train GPT. OpenAI's "decision to copy authors’ works, done without offering any choices or providing any compensation, threatens the role and livelihood of writers as a whole," a press release from the Authors Guild stated. "As the oldest and largest organization of writers, with nearly 14,000 members, the Guild is uniquely positioned to represent authors’ rights. Our membership is diverse and passionate. Our staff, which includes a formidable legal team, has expertise in copyright law. This is all to say: We do not bring this suit lightly. We are here to fight." — Maya Shanbhag Lang, president of the Authors Guild Why does this matter: Copyright is one of the biggest concerns with AI right now. Training generative AI models involve large sets of data, some of which are obtained by scraping publicly available information on the internet. But in many cases, this information might be copyrighted. The trained models might then output work that is derivative without providing appropriate compensation or attribution to the source. The fourth lawsuit against OpenAI by authors: This is the fourth lawsuit filed by authors against OpenAI for copyright infringement. In June, authors Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad filed a lawsuit. In July, Sarah Silverman, Christopher Golden, and Richard Kadrey filed a lawsuit. In September, authors Michael…
