Authors ask a court to rule ChatGPT was built on concealed 'mass piracy'

[Neil82]

Book authors filed a summary judgment motion asking a New York federal judge to rule that OpenAI trained its models on mass piracy, pointing to internal documents they say show the company downloaded books from LibGen and renamed datasets to obscure their origin. The motion, covering 194 titles, asks Judge Sidney Stein to find OpenAI liable for copyright infringement ahead of any trial, arguing the company never purchased the books it used and instead relied on torrented copies from shadow libraries

The filing states plainly that GPT models pose a serious threat to people who write and publish books, pointing to a growing wave of AI generated books already appearing in the market as evidence of real economic harm beyond the copying itself. The case is one of several author lawsuits against AI companies that have been consolidated before Judge Stein in New York, following earlier rulings elsewhere in similar disputes, including a mixed outcome for Meta in a separate California case

OpenAI filed its own mirror-image motion in response, arguing its data collection practices qualify as fair use under existing copyright law, a defense that's become the central legal battleground across nearly all AI copyright litigation so far. The motion notes OpenAI deleted its LibGen files in the summer of 2022 specifically due to legal concerns, a detail the authors argue shows the company knew the practice was legally risky at the time. Curious what people think happens once Judge Stein actually rules on this specific motion, does documented internal awareness of legal risk meaningfully weaken a fair use defense, or does the eventual use of the material still matter more than how it was originally obtained

OpenAI's ChatGPT Was Built on Concealed 'Mass Piracy', Authors Tell Court * TorrentFreaktorrentfreak.com