Publishers tell court OpenAI's copying dilutes author markets

The Association of American Publishers, the Independent Book Publishers Association, the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers, and the Copyright Clearance Center filed a joint amicus brief supporting author, book publisher, and news publisher plaintiffs in In Re: Open AI Inc. Copyright Infringement Litigation, according to Publishers Weekly. The plaintiffs, led by the Authors Guild, filed in September seeking summary judgment in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, asking the court to reject OpenAI and Microsoft's argument that their copying of copyrighted material for AI training is fair use.

The brief argues that OpenAI's training on George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series served a "research mission" to build an LLM capable of writing the final two books of the series if Martin does not, and states that ChatGPT has already generated sequels that substitute for Martin's forthcoming The Winds of Winter. The brief also cites a Microsoft employee who concluded that authors "who were no longer able to sell their books because there are so many substitutive AI-generated books out there" were economic victims of LLMs.

AAP president and CEO Maria A. Pallante said in a statement that "the failure of AI companies to pay for the works they need is an unjustified and damaging departure from the operation and integrity of the law," and that authors and publishers have become "integral to producing Open AI's large language models, which absent guardrails and financial participation have the power to diminish both the value of the works copied and the long-term viability of human authorship more generally." Separately, ChatGPT Is Eating the World reported that roughly 52 proposed amicus briefs have been filed in the case.