Showing posts with label authors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label authors. Show all posts

Thursday, February 15, 2024

Judge rejects most ChatGPT copyright claims from book authors; Ars Technica, February 13, 2024

 , Ars Technica; Judge rejects most ChatGPT copyright claims from book authors

"A US district judge in California has largely sided with OpenAI, dismissing the majority of claims raised by authors alleging that large language models powering ChatGPT were illegally trained on pirated copies of their books without their permission."

Wednesday, December 20, 2023

AI’s Billion-Dollar Copyright Battle Starts With a Font Designer; Bloomberg Law, December 18, 2023

 Isaiah Poritz, Bloomberg Law; AI’s Billion-Dollar Copyright Battle Starts With a Font Designer

"The makers of Copilot, which include OpenAI Inc., Microsoft Corp., GitHub Inc., and other top AI companies, are now facing nearly a dozen lawsuits from authors, artists, and programmers. They claim the industry has vacuumed up their creative work—without consent or compensation—to train AI chatbots and image generators that are already beginning to replace them.

At the core of these novel cases sits Butterick, a typographer and lawyer hailed by some for leading the fight to holding AI accountable, and slammed by others as a Luddite and an obstacle to transformative technological advances."

Monday, December 18, 2023

AI could threaten creators — but only if humans let it; The Washington Post, December 17, 2023

, The Washington Post; AI could threaten creators — but only if humans let it

"A broader rethinking of copyright, perhaps inspired by what some AI companies are already doing, could ensure that human creators get some recompense when AI consumes their work, processes it and produces new material based on it in a manner current law doesn’t contemplate. But such a shift shouldn’t be so punishing that the AI industry has no room to grow. That way, these tools, in concert with human creators, can push the progress of science and useful arts far beyond what the Framers could have imagined."

Thursday, October 26, 2023

Why I let an AI chatbot train on my book; Vox, October 25, 2023

, Vox; Why I let an AI chatbot train on my book

"What’s “fair use” for AI?

I think that training a chatbot for nonprofit, educational purposes, with the express permission of the authors of the works on which it’s trained, seems okay. But do novelists like George R.R. Martin or John Grisham have a case against for-profit companies that take their work without that express permission?

The law, unfortunately, is far from clear on this question." 

Thursday, October 19, 2023

AI is learning from stolen intellectual property. It needs to stop.; The Washington Post, October 19, 2023

William D. Cohan , The Washington Post; AI is learning from stolen intellectual property. It needs to stop.

"The other day someone sent me the searchable database published by Atlantic magazine of more than 191,000 e-books that have been used to train the generative AI systems being developed by Meta, Bloomberg and others. It turns out that four of my seven books are in the data set, called Books3. Whoa.

Not only did I not give permission for my books to be used to generate AI products, but I also wasn’t even consulted about it. I had no idea this was happening. Neither did my publishers, Penguin Random House (for three of the books) and Macmillan (for the other one). Neither my publishers nor I were compensated for use of my intellectual property. Books3 just scraped the content away for free, with Meta et al. profiting merrily along the way. And Books3 is just one of many pirated collections being used for this purpose...

This is wholly unacceptable behavior. Our books are copyrighted material, not free fodder for wealthy companies to use as they see fit, without permission or compensation. Many, many hours of serious research, creative angst and plain old hard work go into writing and publishing a book, and few writers are compensated like professional athletes, Hollywood actors or Wall Street investment bankers. Stealing our intellectual property hurts."

Authors sue Meta, Microsoft, Bloomberg in latest AI copyright clash; Reuters, October 18, 2023

, Reuters ; Authors sue Meta, Microsoft, Bloomberg in latest AI copyright clash

"A group of writers including former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and best-selling Christian author Lysa TerKeurst have filed a lawsuit in New York federal court that accuses Meta (META.O), Microsoft (MSFT.O) and Bloomberg of using their work to train artificial intelligence systems without permission.

The proposed class-action copyright lawsuit filed on Tuesday said that the companies used the controversial "Books3" dataset, which the writers said contains thousands of pirated books, to teach their large language models how to respond to human prompts."

Wednesday, October 18, 2023

A.I. May Not Get a Chance to Kill Us if This Kills It First; Slate, October 17, 2023

 SCOTT NOVER, Slate; A.I. May Not Get a Chance to Kill Us if This Kills It First

"There is a disaster scenario for OpenAI and other companies funneling billions into A.I. models: If a court found that a company was liable for copyright infringement, it could completely halt the development of the offending model."

Wednesday, September 20, 2023

Franzen, Grisham and Other Prominent Authors Sue OpenAI; The New York Times, September 20, 2023

 Alexandra Alter and Franzen, Grisham and Other Prominent Authors Sue OpenAI

"A group of prominent novelists, including John Grisham, Jonathan Franzen and Elin Hilderbrand, are joining the legal battle against OpenAI over its chatbot technology, as fears about the encroachment of artificial intelligence on creative industries continue to grow.

More than a dozen authors filed a lawsuit against OpenAI on Tuesday, accusing the company, which has been backed with billions of dollars in investment from Microsoft, of infringing on their copyrights by using their books to train its popular ChatGPT chatbot. The complaint, which was filed along with the Authors Guild, said that OpenAI’s chatbots can now produce “derivative works” that can mimic and summarize the authors’ books, potentially harming the market for authors’ work, and that the writers were neither compensated nor notified by the company."

Tuesday, September 19, 2023

Bizarre AI-generated products are in stores. Here’s how to avoid them.; The Washington Post, September 18, 2023

 , The Washington Post; Bizarre AI-generated products are in stores. Here’s how to avoid them.

"Copyright and intellectual property issues around AI are still in the air...

The Authors Guild, which represents many authors whose work has been used to train AI tools, is asking for legislation and pushing companies to disclose when a book is written by AI...

“We see it as consumer protection, but it’s also a way to insulate the book marketplace because otherwise, you’ll just see an influx of AI-generated content on a platform like Kindle,” said Mary Rasenberger, chief executive of the Authors Guild. “It will take away from the market [demand] for human creative works.”

Rasenberger said that she doesn’t think AI can be held off forever and even sees a place for it as a useful tool for writers. The guild’s goal is to make sure AI is regulated, licensed and legitimate, with money going back to authors, she said."

Monday, September 18, 2023

Four large US publishers sue ‘shadow library’ for alleged copyright infringement; The Guardian, September 15, 2023

, The Guardian ; Four large US publishers sue ‘shadow library’ for alleged copyright infringement

"Four leading US publishers have sued an online “shadow library” that allows visitors to download textbooks and other copyrighted materials free.

Cengage, Macmillan Learning, McGraw Hill and Pearson Education filed the suit against Library Genesis, also known as LibGen, in Manhattan federal court, citing “extensive violations” of copyright law.

LibGen operates a collection of different domains that allow users to search for and download pdf versions of books. The suit, filed on Thursday, said LibGen holds more than 20,000 files published by the four suing companies."

Tuesday, August 8, 2023

Academic Book About Emojis Can’t Include The Emojis It Talks About Because Of Copyright; Techdirt, August 4, 2023

, Techdirt ; Academic Book About Emojis Can’t Include The Emojis It Talks About Because Of Copyright

"Sounds interesting enough, but as Goldman highlights with an image from the book, Kiaer was apparently unable to actually show examples of many of the emoji she was discussing due to copyright fears. While companies like Twitter and Google have offered up their own emoji sets under open licenses, not all of them have, and some of the specifics about the variations in how different companies represent different emoji apparently were key to the book...

Now, my first reaction to this is that using the emoji and stickers and whatnot in the book seems like a very clear fair use situation. But… that requires a publisher willing to take up the fight (and an insurance company behind the publisher willing to finance that fight). And, that often doesn’t happen. Publishers are notoriously averse to supporting fair use, because they don’t want to get sued.

But, really, this just ends up highlighting (once again) the absolute ridiculousness of copyright in the modern world. No one in their right mind would think that a book about emoji is somehow harming the market for whatever emoji or stickers the professor wished to include. Yet, due to the nature of copyright, here we are. With an academic book about emoji that can’t even include the emoji being spoken about."

Monday, July 17, 2023

AI learned from their work. Now they want compensation.; The Washington Post, July 16, 2023

 , The Washington Post; AI learned from their work. Now they want compensation.

"Artists say the livelihoods of millions of creative workers are at stake, especially because AI tools are already being used to replace some human-made work. Mass scraping of art, writing and movies from the web for AI training is a practice creators say they never considered or consented to.

But in public appearances and in responses to lawsuits, the AI companies have argued that the use of copyrighted works to train AI falls under fair use — a concept in copyright law that creates an exception if the material is changed in a “transformative” way."

Thousands of authors urge AI companies to stop using work without permission; Morning Edition, NPR, July 17, 2023

, Morning Edition NPR; Thousands of authors urge AI companies to stop using work without permission

"Thousands of writers including Nora Roberts, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Michael Chabon and Margaret Atwood have signed a letter asking artificial intelligence companies like OpenAI and Meta to stop using their work without permission or compensation."

Sunday, July 9, 2023

Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement; The Verge, July 9, 2023

Wes Davis, The Verge ; Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement

"Comedian and author Sarah Silverman, as well as authors Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey — are suing OpenAI and Meta each in a US District Court over dual claims of copyright infringement. 

The suits alleges, among other things, that OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Meta’s LLaMA were trained on illegally-acquired datasets containing their works, which they say were acquired from “shadow library” websites like Bibliotik, Library Genesis, Z-Library, and others, noting the books are “available in bulk via torrent systems.”"

Thursday, July 6, 2023

The copyright battles against OpenAI have begun; Quartz, July 6. 2023

Faustine Ngila, Quartz; The copyright battles against OpenAI have begun

Let the AI copyright battles begin... 

"With this latest lawsuit from Tremblay and Awad, regulators and courts will be tasked with mulling over the rules of copyright with regards to AI. They may require generative AI companies to disclose how and where they sourced their training data, letting the world peek inside the black box of these AI systems for the very first time."

Monday, July 3, 2023

Bestselling authors Mona Awad and Paul Tremblay sue OpenAI over copyright infringement; The Los Angeles Times, July 1, 2023

EMILY ST. MARTIN, The Los Angeles Times; Bestselling authors Mona Awad and Paul Tremblay sue OpenAI over copyright infringement

"Two bestselling novelists filed a suit against OpenAI in a San Francisco federal court on Wednesday, claiming in a proposed class action that the company used copyright-protected intellectual property to “train” its artificial intelligence chatbot.

Authors Mona Awad and Paul Tremblay claim that ChatGPT was trained in part by “ingesting” their novels without their consent."

Thursday, June 29, 2023

Authors Sue OpenAI Claiming Mass Copyright Infringement of Hundreds of Thousands of Novels; The Hollywood Reporter, June 29, 2023

WINSTON CHO, The Hollywood Reporter; Authors Sue OpenAI Claiming Mass Copyright Infringement of Hundreds of Thousands of Novels

"Another lawsuit has been filed against OpenAI over its unauthorized collection of information across the web to train its artificial intelligence chatbot, this time by authors who say ChatGPT infringes on copyrights to their novels.

The proposed class action filed in San Francisco federal court on Wednesday alleges that OpenAI “relied on harvesting mass quantities” of copyright-protected works “without consent, without credit, and without compensation.” It seeks a court order that the company infringed on writers’ works when it illegally downloaded copies of novels to train its AI system and that ChatGPT’s answers constitute infringement."

Friday, April 28, 2023

A terrible decision on AI-made images hurts creators; The Washington Post, April 27, 2023

Edward Lee, The Washington Post; A terrible decision on AI-made images hurts creators

"The Copyright Office’s position is wrong. It misunderstands authorship and ignores the copyright clause’s goal of promoting “progress” by offering authors incentives to create new works, including with new technologies.

Its decision also misunderstands the creative process."