‘Game of Thrones’ creator and other authors sue ChatGPT-maker OpenAI | Hacker News Reader

‘Game of Thrones’ creator and other authors sue ChatGPT-maker OpenAI

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28 pointsoblib29 comments

> The lawsuit cites specific ChatGPT searches for each author, such as one for Martin that alleges the program generated “an infringing, unauthorized, and detailed outline for a prequel” to “A Game of Thrones” that was titled “A Dawn of Direwolves” and used “the same characters from Martin’s existing books in the series “A Song of Ice and Fire.”

Selling this work would be copyright infringement. There’s no ambiguity there.

Generating it would not.

Does the subscription count at all, towards “selling”?

Seems unlikely. You can hire someone to write you stuff that violates copyright, like fanfiction. It is unlikely that any court would find that the purpose / character of that use is commercial in nature; nor that the effect of creating it would have any effect on the potential market for the original.

Even if someone is generating a new novel for themselves to read every day, it doesn’t seem likely to pass those tests so long as they are not distributing it.

The gpt copyright infringement is strangely divided a lot of tech workers.

Generally people that are against overly broad patents and other copyrights should be dismissive of copyright claims of artists complaining about gpt. I remember Oracle being mocked for suing google over 9 lines of fairly generic code. Or Tiffany trademarking a color.

But now because Microsoft stands to benefit people are very concerned about "stolen" work. The funny thing is that the overall net benefit would be a lot greater from LLMs as opposed to someone not being able to use a certain color.

The biggest irony is that openai will obv prevail regardless. They'll pay their fines and work with regulators. The only thing that will be hurt will be competitors or open source projects

It's just annoying that after decades of copyright-maximalist public policy and corporate PR, it's now time for a sensible application of copyright when it comes to this specific issue.

Exactly. Think of it like a friend pitching you a new book idea or coming up with one on the spot. Selling the work is what should be infringement.

Okay, does OpenAI sending you this work as part of your paid ChatGPT subscription constitute selling?

It might constitute selling. But not in a way that likely violates copyright. See adjacent reply to the same question.

Dont you have to directly affect or compete with someone or something for it to constitute copyright?

That’s trademark

> selling this work would be copyright infringement. There’s no ambiguity there.

>Generating it would not.

Are you sure about that? My understanding is that under US copyright law the copyright owner has the exclusive right "to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work."

Which is to say, a derivative work - which this would certainly be - would legally still be infringing even if it were not distributed.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107

It’s fair use though. You would have an extremely difficult time arguing that a piece of generated art for just yourself passes muster on:

> the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Because the effect of the use on potential market is just 1 sale and it’s not even clear that there’s a diminishing impact on the actual rights holder for that guy.

I concur that fair use could be an effective defense against infringement claims; the section you are referring mentions distribution/copying specifically, but it refers to other sections which apply to adaptation.

Regardless, the law itself seems clear that the right to adaptation is exclusive independent of distribution.

The fair use arguments are interesting, considering:

- AI businesses are commercial enterprises

- Many works (perhaps including an author's entire published output) were digested in their entirety to create LLMs

- If anyone can generate their own version of GoT/SoI&F with an AI system, does it diminish the market for the original?

(On the other hand, it's too bad HBO didn't have one at the time.)

It seems extremely unlikely that a company could successfully argue people writing fanfics for just themselves with the aid of an AI is sufficient to cause any harm to a business. The scale is minuscule. It’s likely not a substitute either.

These are my favorite threads on HN right now.

In the threads, most comments dismiss the value of creators' works in building the billion-dollar businesses developing these increasingly-powerful content laundering machines, based almost exclusively on content theft.

Simultaneously, we're 10 years away from a world where staff "software engineers" go the way of human computers¹, replaced by product and marketing folks and maybe a system architect.

To those commenters, I say: I hope y'all have a Plan B.

¹ https://www.history.com/news/human-computers-women-at-nasa

>Simultaneously, we're 10 years away from a world where staff "software engineers" go the way of human computers¹ Where's the source that this is going to happen?

Fear mongering.

Software engineering will change but it will not be gone. Those who learn how to use these tools will become more valuable than those who don't. Same with every profession.

I do have a plan B. The software engineer, the marketing guy and the maybe system architect of 10 years in the future are all the same person: me using AI tools.

I don't think it scales when 99% of us get laid off and we all have the same plan B.

> we're 10 years away from a world where

...software developers have adapted to the newest tools and started working at a higher level of abstraction, just as we have been doing over and over since the beginning of the art.

There's a key difference between writing for the screen and writing for software - making software engineers more efficient makes software cheaper will raise its demand. This is similar to how there are more accountants now than pre- spreadsheets. But writers in TV and film are not the bottleneck, making them more efficient will not lead to more demand for entertainment. It's clearer to me that the latter camp are in serious trouble, whereas we may just need to adapt.

He's looking at this all wrong. AI can be used to complete his story, as he has no chance at the rate he's going. Might even be less divisive than HBO's finale.

That was my first thought as well.

It's probably Brandon Sanderson who should complain because there will be less of a market for completing unfinished series.

Hm, anyone know what prompt one would need to finally generate the full Winds of Winter?

GRRM doesn't know either. That's why he's suing to try to find it in discovery

Maybe if Martin would quit playing with Asterisk trophies and politics and actually finish Game of Thrones people wouldn't be so keen to have an AI write prequels and sequels....

Take-down notices may be the next step in this process

[dupe]

More discussion over here from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37585157

Reply on news.ycombinator.com