AI Copyright Infringement Lawsuits | AI Data Privacy Attorneys

The Lyon Firm is investigating AI Copyright Infringement Lawsuits on behalf of publishers and individual plaintiffs nationwide. With the advent of generative AI software, large tech companies have allegedly used copyrighted works for their own financial advancement, violating age-old intellectual property law. To learn more about current AI copyright lawsuits, or to discuss filing your own claim, contact our AI Privacy Lawyers.

Who Has Filed AI Copyright Infringement Lawsuits?

Multiple plaintiffs, including bestselling authors and news outlets, have filed class action AI Copyright Infringement claims against OpenAI for copying books and other copyright-protected materials without consent. In the filed complaint, publishers posed questions to ChatGPT relating to certain copyrighted works, and received a response that suggests the AI model was fed the material at some point.

Plaintiffs from the Daily News, Chicago Tribune Company, LLC, Orlando Sentinel Communications Company, LLC, Sun-Sentinel Company, LLC, San Jose Mercury-News, LLC, DP Media Network, LLC, ORB Publishing, LLC, and Northwest Publications filed a class action AI Copyright Infringement Lawsuit that claimed Microsoft and OpenAI used millions of their articles without permission and without payment.

Plaintiffs claim they have spent billions of dollars to generate these articles, and the AI companies have taken this work with impunity, sometimes republishing articles verbatim, and are offering no compensation.

AI software like ChatGPT is trained with datasets, which includes almost everything available on the internet. Unfortunately, a lot of the content available on the internet is protected by copyright law, and republishing it or using it in certain manners could constitute a violation of the Copyright Act.

Individual authors have filed separate AI copyright lawsuits after discovering that their copyrighted works of fiction have been copied without permission and fed into AI chatbots (large language models) designed to provide realistic responses to various user prompts and queries. Thus, it is believed that tens of thousands of copyrighted books and texts have been entered in these systems. These large language model (LLM) algorithms are critical to building a popular AI system, and are the centerpiece of the AI Copyright Infringement legal quagmire now being argued.

Authors have taken issue with this software that takes their copyrighted texts and spits out derivative works. The AI can now mimic, summarize, or paraphrase their materials, potentially devaluing their work. There is significant support, however, to save certain creative industries, and protect their interests. At the same time, the tech companies have said the very same thing: that if they are limited in what they are to feed their AI models, the systems will be handicapped forever.

What Constitutes AI Copyright Infringement?

AI Intellectual Property Lawyers in these matters say they are presenting straightforward copyright infringement cases based on law that is over a hundred years old. Our legal team sees opportunities for individual artists and publishers to file class action claims in order to recover past and future economic damages.

Authors, media companies and other publishers protect their content by applying for a copyright. This has been standard practice for many decades. Plaintiffs see no reason why intellectual property rights should be compromised by new AI models, simply because they have the ability to manipulate vast quantities of available data.

Plaintiffs in these cases claim they never authorized OpenAI or other AI systems like Copilot and Bard to make copies of their books, make derivative works, publicly display their work, or distribute copies of their work. All those rights of authorship should belong exclusively to the publishers and individual authors under existing copyright law. The plaintiffs in the Open AI copyright infringement class action say the company used their materials without consent, without credit, and without compensation.

The corporate defendants in these AI copyright cases argue that they require high-quality content in order to make their generative AI products as commercially viable as possible. They have shown they are willing to go to great lengths–even challenging intellectual property laws–to build the most successful AI system. OpenAI’s founder, Sam Altman, has even admitted that the plaintiffs’ accusations are accurate.

Altman stated the following: “Because copyright today covers virtually every sort of human expression—including blog posts, photographs, forum posts, scraps of software code, and government documents—it would be impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials.”

But despite admitting that the companies need copyrighted content to create a reliable and realistic AI model, the defendants in AI copyright infringement lawsuits argue they are still operating within the boundaries of copyright law. Perplexingly, they believe they are operating within the “fair use” realm by using the copyrighted materials without permission and without paying for the privilege of using this content.

Personal privacy advocates say Big Tech simply knew they were entering a legal nightmare but did so anyway, believing that they might still come out on top financially if they acted first and fought the legal battle later. Some believe that Big Tech is banking on the courts siding with their “fair use” argument to save the generative AI industry as a whole.

Can I File an AI Copyright Lawsuit?

This is new legal territory in some regards, but there are many legal precedents in the intellectual property practice area that suggest new technology, and those creating it, must still adhere to existing privacy laws. The EU has formally passed an AI Privacy law that holds any AI company accountable for violating the privacy of individuals. The AI tools used in the EU are now legally bound to disclose any copyrighted material used, or they may be held liable.

The U.S. is working toward similar regulation, but this has been a moving target. You can still file a claim, however. By filing an AI Copyright Infringement Lawsuit, you may be able to negotiate a reasonable compensation package and hold a company responsible for using your copyrighted materials.

Why Hire The Lyon Firm?

Our AI Privacy Lawyers are not convinced that Big Tech has the rights to use whatever data they please without consequences. We would like to hear from individuals and publishers who believe their copyrighted work may have been illegally used by a generative AI software.

Joe Lyon is currently involved in numerous invasion of privacy, data privacy and data theft claims in all fifty states. He has the experience, the resources and the willingness to take on some of the largest tech companies in the country and fight for your AI intellectual property rights. Call for a free and confidential consultation.