Unsealed Briefs in Authors’ Case v. Microsoft/OpenAI (authorsguild.org)

Article summary

Newly released court filings in the Authors Guild's lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft reveal that executives and employees at both companies knowingly broke the law by using copyrighted books to train their AI models. The filings show that OpenAI and Microsoft were aware of the potential damage to authors and the book industry, but chose to proceed with their plans anyway. The lawsuit alleges that OpenAI and Microsoft illegally trained their products on copyrighted books, and the new filings provide evidence of the companies' intentional actions.

Main themes

• AI training data
• copyright infringement
• corporate ethics
• automation and job loss
• lobbying and bias
• technological progress and responsibility

What commenters say

• The use of copyrighted material without permission is a clear violation of the law and unethical.
• The focus on optics rather than the law is a sign of a larger cultural problem within the company.
• The impact of automation on jobs is a natural consequence of technological progress and not necessarily a bad thing.
• The use of a 'sketchy Russian website' as a source of training data is a legitimate concern due to potential associations with troll farms and other malicious activities.
• The Authors Guild is a lobbying organization with a biased agenda, and their claims should be taken with skepticism.
• The discussion around LibGen and copyright is a distraction from the real issue of OpenAI's intentional violation of the law.
• The release of this information will likely be used as a teaching tool for companies on how to avoid similar situations in the future.