A Game of Thrones fan who posted “completed” novels to GitHub has removed them after being singled out in a massive lawsuit against OpenAI, the parent company of artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT. According to fansite WinterIsComing.net, Liam Swayne did not receive a takedown notice or a cease-and-desist, and did not know until he was noted in the lawsuit that Martin objected to the books. While that might seem difficult to believe, remember that in recent years, most big-name authors have stopped going after fan fiction artists who don’t monetize their work. It’s likely that the real offense here was feeding Martin’s books into the AI database in order to get the output right.
It’s worth noting that Swayne was not named in the lawsuit — Martin and company were not seeking money from him — but “noted,” meaning that his work was specifically cited as evidence in a lawsuit against OpenAI. Recently, Martin and more than a dozen other authors decided to collectively sue OpenAI, alleging “mass-scale copyright infringement” by ChatGPT. Litigation to set boundaries for artificial intelligence in the realm of copyrighted art have been coming fast and furious in recent months.
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“I am just now learning that I was mentioned in a legal document pertaining to the OpenAI lawsuit,” Swayne posted to WinterIsComing. “I have removed the project from GitHub. Should any of George R. R. Martin’s representatives wish to reach out, my contact info remains available.”
Swayne used ChatGPT to produce finished versions of The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring, the long-awaited final two volumes in Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. For those who got Swayne’s version, it will likely be entertaining to look back and forth between the two “versions” of the stories and see how much AI got right and wrong when Martin finally finishes the series.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on September 19th and seeks to block OpenAI from continuing to use the authors’ works to train the artificial intelligence chatbot. The suit is also asking for unspecified monetary damages as well as statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work.
“This case is merely the beginning of our battle to defend authors from theft by OpenAI and other generative AI,” Maya Shanbhag Lang, Authors Guild president and a class representative, said in a statement. “Our staff, which includes a formidable legal team, has expertise in copyright law. This is all to say: We do not bring this suit lightly. We are here to fight.”
