Two nonfiction authors have filed a lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI, accusing them of using their work to train artificial intelligence (AI) models. The week before, the New York Times had just announced a lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI, accusing them of using its articles to train large language models (LLM) without explicit permission.
Authors Nicholas Basbanes and Nicholas Gage filed a class action lawsuit in Manhattan federal court, accusing Microsoft of infringing their copyright by using information from their book to train OpenAI's LLM for ChatGPT and other services. The lawsuit also references a lawsuit filed by The New York Times and notes that Nicholas Gage previously worked for The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
Mr. Gage is one of the most acclaimed investigative journalists in the United States. He holds a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. His work at The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times influenced the course of important events in American and world history.
The lawsuit demands that technology companies compensate authors when they use their work to train artificial intelligence models.
Notably, shortly after The New York Times brought suit against these defendants in this court, the defendants publicly acknowledged that copyright owners like the plaintiffs must be compensated for the defendants' use of their works.
In addition, lawyers for Basbanes and Gage also said that it is outrageous that technology companies "have billions of dollars in capital and can build another commercial industry worth more than a billion dollars simply by stealing the plaintiff's copyrighted works."
The two authors are demanding damages from Microsoft and OpenAI and asking the two companies to stop using copyrighted information to train artificial intelligence models.
Basbanes and Gage sought to represent a class of writers whose copyrighted works were systematically misappropriated by the defendants. Mr. Basbanes and Mr. Gage seek damages from the defendants for copyright infringement, lost opportunities to license their works, and market damage that the defendants have caused and continue to cause writers. They are also asking for a permanent injunction to prevent these damages from happening again.
It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time Microsoft has come under scrutiny for its investments and interests in OpenAI. Earlier this year, Microsoft was sued for privacy violations for using personal data to train artificial intelligence models. Subsequently, authors Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad also filed a lawsuit, claiming that ChatGPT had illegally accessed their works. Not only that, last month the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) also announced that they are investigating whether the cooperation between Microsoft and OpenAI involves antitrust laws.