Julian Sancton sues OpenAI, Microsoft for copyright abuse

OpenAI and Microsoft were sued for using the works of authors without their consent to train their AI models.

Author and journalist Julian Sancton accused OpenAI of using tens of thousands of nonfiction books without authorisation, including his own work Madhouse at the End of the Earth, to train its large language models.

Sancton’s lawsuit also accused Microsoft of heloing generate unlicensed copies of authors’ works for training data, and of being aware of OpenAI’s 'indiscriminate' internet crawling for copyrighted material.

The suit constituted the first time an author has sued OpenAI while naming Microsoft as a defendant. Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI and incorporated it's systems, including ChatGPT, across its product portfolio.

OpenAI and Microsoft deny using copyrighted materials in their AI training. Both companies have said they would reimburse commercial customers using their generative AI services for adverse judgements should they be sued for copyright infringement.