Microsoft, OpenAI, and Google Sued for Data Misuse and Copyright Violation

January 6, 2024: Microsoft, OpenAI, and Google face legal challenges due to their artificial intelligence training methods. The companies are accused of using written works and data without the right permissions.

OpenAI, supported by Microsoft, is involved in a lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court. The complaint comes from Nicholas Basbanes and Nicholas Gage, who say their books were used to train ChatGPT without their consent.

These authors are known for their nonfiction work and have a background in journalism.

Their lawyer, Michael Richter, argues that it is unfair for big companies to use creators’ work without paying them, especially when these companies make a lot of money.

This situation is similar to other lawsuits against tech companies. Writers like Sarah Silverman and George R.R. Martin have also sued for misusing their work in AI training.

Alongside this, Google is dealing with its legal problems. The Clarkson Law Firm has filed a lawsuit against Google, Alphabet (its parent company), and DeepMind, Google’s AI subsidiary.

The lawsuit claims that Google scraped data from millions of users without their permission, breaking copyright laws. This issue is particularly important because of Google’s recent update to its privacy policy, which talks about using publicly available information for AI training.

Google says this practice isn’t new and is part of services like Bard. But the lawsuit argues that this might exploit private data.

The Clarkson Law Firm has recently updated its lawsuit to make their case stronger. They have added public plaintiffs, including Jill Leovy, a best-selling author.

These plaintiffs represent many people who might be affected by the alleged copyright violations.

The updated lawsuit also includes new claims about Google violating ownership and property rights of other websites by collecting user data.