3 Count: Sweet Little Lies

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1: Authors Sue OpenAI Claiming Mass Copyright Infringement of Hundreds of Thousands of Novels

First off today, Winston Cho at The Hollywood Reporter Esquire reports that authors Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT, alleging infringement of their books.

The lawsuit, which is seeking class action status, claims that OpenAI trained its large language model using a variety of copyright-protected works, including novels written by them. They claim to have found evidence of this going all the way back to GPT-1, the very first release of them generative AI system.

According to the lawsuit, the books likely came from places like Smash Words as well as pirate websites. However, since OpenAI no longer discloses where its dataset comes from, it is difficult to be certain, though they note that ChatGPT can create summaries of their novels, something, at least theoretically, it wouldn’t be able to do without ingesting them first.

2: Jeff Koons, Sculptor Each Claim Advantage After Warhol Copyright Decision

Next up today, Blake Brittain at Reuters reports that, in an ongoing case between artists Jeff Koons and Michael Hayden, both sides have claimed the recent Supreme Court decision in the Warhol case favors them.

The lawsuit was filed in 2021 by Hayden, who alleged that he designed a pillar with a snake wrapped around it for Italian porn star and politician Cicciolina, given name Ilona Staller, to perform on. He alleges that, in 1989, Koons traveled to Italy to photograph himself and with Staller using the pillar as a prop in the shoot. According to Hayden, he never authorized the use of his sculpture, prompting the lawsuit.

Recently, the Supreme Court in a separate case dealing with Andy Warhol’s paintings of Prince, the high court found that, while transformativeness is important to consider when discussing fair use, it shifted more of the focus onto other aspects of fair use, including how commercial the use is. However, both sides in the Koons case claim that the ruling supports their arguments, with Hayden claiming that the nature of the use was exactly the same for what it was created for and Koons argued that the pedestal was “utilitarian”, meaning that the arguments favored his side.

3: Photographer Sues Getty for Copyright Infringement

Finally today, Inside Imaging reports that music photographer Alec Byrne has filed a lawsuit against Getty Images, claiming that the organization is licensing some of his most famous photos without permission.

According to the lawsuit, between 1969 and 1973, Byrne was in the UK and took photos of many of the world’s most famous bands, including ABBA, Fleetwood Mac and the Bee Gees. However, Byrne claims that that Getty Images has licensed his work to over 230 customers despite not having a license to do so.

The images are listed under the name Redferns Library, a library that was founded by the late music photographer David Refern. Getty acquired the library in 2008 and, according to Byrne, he became aware of the alleged infringement in November 2021. It is unclear if Byrne had any connection with the Redferns Library, but the lawsuit does note that Getty had already restricted use of the image, making it available for editorial rights rather than regular royalty-free usage.

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