A group of authors, including Michael Chabon and Rachel Louise Snyder sued ChatGPT developer OpenAI for allegedly benefiting and profiting from the 'unauthorized and illegal use' of their copyrighted content.

The lawsuit called out ChatGPT’s ability to summarise and analyse content written by authors Michael Chabon, David Henry Hwang, Rachel Louise Snyder, and Ayelet Waldman, stating this 'is only possible' if OpenAI trained its GPT large language model on their works. It added that these outputs are actually 'derivative' works that infringe on their copyrights. 

The suit also highlighted “infamous ‘shadow library’ websites, like Library Genesis, Z-Library, Sci-Hub, and Bibliotik, which host massive collections of pirated books … have long been of interest to the AI training community.”

The lawsuit also asked the court to stop OpenAI from engaging in "unlawful and unfair business practices" while awarding the authors damages related to copyright violations and other penalties.