If corporations can be considered people, I don’t see how you could legally prevent an AI from reading and learning from books that are available to the public.

It they aren’t reproducing passages verbatim, how can it be a copywrite infringement?

It would be hard to prove but an AI can be taught to write in the “style” of an established author. (I’m sure humans do that too even if they aren’t aware of it.)

I asked Bing one time to create paintings in the style of Van Gogh and Dali. It did quite well.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT is the target of a major new lawsuit, alleging the company illegally copied the copyrighted works of authors to train the artificial-intelligence robot.

Led by the Authors Guild, a New York-based professional organization for published writers, a group of 17 writers, including George R.R. Martin, John Grisham, Jodi Picoult, George Saunders and Jonathan Franzen, joined the proposed class-action lawsuit against OpenAI.

The lawsuit, filed Sept. 19 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, seeks an injunction blocking OpenAI from continuing to use the authors’ works to train ChatGPT, as well as unspecific monetary damages (and statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work). A copy of the complaint is available at this link.

A spokesperson for OpenAI said in a statement to the AP: “We’re having productive conversations with many creators around the world, including the Authors Guild, and have been working co-operatively to understand and discuss their concerns about AI. We’re optimistic we will continue to find mutually beneficial ways to work together.”

The lawsuit comes after a similar one was filed in July 2023 on behalf of Sarah Silverman and two other authors, accusing Meta and OpenAI of illegally using copyrighted works — including Silverman’s 2010 bestselling memoir “The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee” — to train their AI systems.

In the latest suit, the named plaintiffs are: David Baldacci, Mary Bly, Michael Connelly, Sylvia Day, Jonathan Franzen, John Grisham, Elin Hilderbrand, Christina Baker Kline, Maya Shanbhag Lang, Victor LaValle, George R.R. Martin, Jodi Picoult, Douglas Preston, Roxana Robinson, George Saunders, Scott Turow and Rachel Vail.

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Hopefully I am not sued for posting this excerpt…