OpenAI claimed that the authors “misconceive the scope of copyright, failing to take into account the limitations and exceptions (including fair use) that properly leave room for innovations like the large language models now at the forefront of artificial intelligence.”

According to OpenAI, even if the authors’ books were a “tiny part” of ChatGPT’s massive data set, “the use of copyrighted materials by innovators in transformative ways does not violate copyright.” Unlike plagiarists who seek to directly profit off distributing copyrighted materials, OpenAI argued that its goal was “to teach its models to derive the rules underlying human language” to do things like help people “save time at work,” “make daily life easier,” or simply entertain themselves by typing prompts into ChatGPT….

OpenAI has also sought to dismiss claims that ChatGPT’s training models violate the DMCA….

If OpenAI succeeds in getting the majority of the authors’ claims tossed, the only thing left for the court to decide would be if OpenAI’s training model directly infringes copyright law. That could mean ChatGPT’s training data violates the law either by reproducing and distributing the original works or by preparing derivative works without authorization or without sufficient changes.

The authors are unlikely to give up this fight that easily, though. To them, generative AI is a huge “grift” that’s not helping to further human intelligence, but rather represents a copy of “human intelligence” that has been “repackaged and divorced from its creators.”

Read more:

Belanger, A. (2023, Augut 30). OpenAI disputes authors’ claims that every ChatGPT response is a derivative work. Ars Technica. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/08/openai-disputes-authors-claims-that-every-chatgpt-response-is-a-derivative-work/