Sarah Silverman sues Meta, OpenAI for copyright infringement


FILE PHOTO: Sarah Silverman presents the "Mr. Saturday Night" musical at the 75th Annual Tony Awards in New York City, U.S., June 12, 2022. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo

(Reuters) - Comedian Sarah Silverman and two authors have filed copyright infringement lawsuits against Meta Platforms and OpenAI for allegedly using their content without permission to train artificial intelligence language models.

The proposed class action lawsuits filed by Silverman, Richard Kadrey and Christopher Golden in San Francisco federal court Friday allege Facebook parent company Meta and ChatGPT maker OpenAI used copyrighted material to train chat bots.

Meta and OpenAI, a private company backed by Microsoft Corp, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Sunday.

The lawsuits underscore the legal risks developers of chat bots face when using troves of copyrighted material to create apps that deliver realistic responses to user prompts.

Silverman, Kadrey and Golden allege Meta and OpenAI used their books without authorization to develop their so-called large language models, which their makers pitch as powerful tools for automating tasks by replicating human conversation.

In their lawsuit against Meta, the plaintiffs allege that leaked information about the company’s artificial intelligence business shows their work was used without permission.

The lawsuit against OpenAI alleges that summaries of the plaintiffs’ work generated by ChatGPT indicate the bot was trained on their copyrighted content.

“The summaries get some details wrong” but still show that ChatGPT “retains knowledge of particular works in the training dataset," the lawsuit says.

The lawsuits seek unspecified money damages on behalf of a nationwide class of copyright owners whose works were allegedly infringed.

(Reporting by Jack Queen; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)

Follow us on our official WhatsApp channel for breaking news alerts and key updates!

   

Next In Tech News

Musk now says it's 'pointless' to build a $25,000 Tesla for human drivers
Google defeats lawsuit over gift card fraud
Russian court fines Apple for not deleting two podcasts, RIA reports
GlobalFoundries forecasts upbeat Q4 results on strong demand from smartphone makers
Emerson sharpens automation focus with offer for rest of AspenTech in $15 billion deal
Palantir shares surge to record as AI boom powers forecast raise
Tax fraud investigators search Netflix offices in Paris and Amsterdam, says source
Singapore's Keppel to buy Japanese AI-ready data centre
Tesla increases wages for staff at German gigafactory by 4%
Apple explores push into smart glasses with ‘Atlas’ user study

Others Also Read