In a landmark case, the Authors Guild and several author plaintiffs have initiated legal action against OpenAI, alleging significant copyright infringement related to the training of its large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT. The lawsuit, filed in September 2023, accuses OpenAI of unlawfully copying and ingesting copyrighted books to train its models without obtaining permission from the authors.

Background of the Case

OpenAI began as a non-profit in 2015, evolving into a for-profit entity in 2019 and securing a staggering $13 billion investment from Microsoft. With the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, OpenAI quickly amassed a user base of 100 million monthly active users within just three months. The training datasets used by OpenAI, referred to as "Books1" and "Books2," are believed to have included content from pirate book repositories such as Library Genesis (LibGen), Z-Library, and Bibliotik. OpenAI has acknowledged utilizing "large, publicly available datasets that include copyrighted works," suggesting that avoiding copyrighted material could severely compromise the quality of their models.

Authors’ Claims of Injury

The plaintiffs argue they suffered multiple injuries from OpenAI's unauthorized use of their works. These injuries include:

• Unauthorized reproduction of their copyrig