Happy Thursday everyone!

On 9/19/2023, a major class action was filed alleging copyright infringement on the part of OpenAI, and the named class members are certainly worth mentioning – the Authors Guild, David Baldacci, Mary Bly, Michael Connelly, Sylvia Day, Jonathan Franzen, John Grisham, Elin Hilderbrand, Christina Baker Kline, Maya Shanbhag Land, Victor Lavalle, George R.R. Martin, Jodi Picoult, Douglas Preston, Roxana Robinson, George Saunders, Scott Turow, and Rachel Vail.

You can check out the complaint here: Authors Guild et al v. OpenAI Inc. et al, 1:23CV08292.

In short, these authors are suing because OpenAI is using their works – without their permission and without compensation – for training large language models (LLMs) that OpenAI is profiting from.

This lawsuit tracks the previous lawsuit filed against OpenAI earlier this year by other authors, but the claims of this lawsuit are much stronger. This lawsuit alleges that OpenAI used the authors voice, characters, stories, etc. to create sequels and derivatives of their works.

And this includes the long-awaited final books in the Game of Thrones series.

Just wow.

Now, yesterday, 10/4/2023, was the FTC’s virtual roundtable on “Creative Economy and Generative AI” which was extremely enlightening thanks to the diverse group of creatives who participated. There was representation from virtually every creative medium…models, musicians, voice actors, writers, etc.

And one of those speakers was named class member Douglas Preston who summed up the current state of affairs regarding generative AI perfectly: “This is what happens when the fox designs the chicken coop.”

Nearly every speaker shared the same concern: AI replacing their jobs.

And at the end of the day, generative AI is not only taking these creatives’ works without compensation or permission, it is forcing these creatives to compete with themselves in the form of a seemingly limitless machine.

And when generative AI remains such a threat to creatives, we are likely to see a lot more of these lawsuits in the upcoming months.