Jia Tolentino, Kai Bird, and more authors launch yet another AI copyright lawsuit

Now, like clockwork, a new group of authors has launched a suit against Microsoft, alleging that the company used their books without permission to train its Megatron AI model, per Reuters. While it’s unclear if the two suits are explicitly related, the timing and similarity are certainly notable, if for no other reason than furthering the message that artists and creatives will continue to fight back against the encroachment of AI, even if courts rule in the AI companies’ favor. The authors include Jia Tolentino (Trick Mirror), Kai Bird (American Prometheus: The Triumph And Tragedy Of J. Robert Oppenheimer), Daniel Okrent (Last Call: The Rise And Fall of Prohibition), and several others, all of whom allege that Microsoft also used pirated copies of their works to train its LLM. 

The authors specifically claim that Microsoft used a collection of 200,000 pirated books to create a “computer model that is not only built on the work of thousands of creators and authors, but also built to generate a wide range of expression that mimics the syntax, voice, and themes of the copyrighted works on which it was trained,” per the complaint. They are requesting a court order blocking Microsoft’s infringement and damages of up to $150,000 per misused work. We’ll see if the two cases have any impact on each other as the opposing industries continue to navigate this new frontier.