Is it a crime to learn something by reading a copyrighted book? What if you later summarize that book to a friend or write a description of it online? Of course, these things are perfectly legal when a person does them. But does that change when it’s an artificial intelligence system doing the reading, learning, and summarizing?
Sarah Silverman, comedian and author of the book The Bedwetter, seems to think it does. She and several other authors are suing OpenAI, the tech company behind the popular AI chatbot ChatGPT, through which users submit text prompts and receive back AI-generated answers.
Last week, a federal judge largely rejected their claims.
The ruling is certainly good news for OpenAI and for ChatGPT users. It’s also good news for the future of AI technology more broadly. AI tools could be completely hamstrung by the expansive vision of copyright law that Silverman and the other authors in this case envision.
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The Authors’ Complaints and OpenAI’s Response
Teaching AI to communicate and “think” like a human takes a lot of text. To this…
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