In late 2022, OpenAI's ChatGPT was released to the public. And while people threw bouquets at the power of generative AI, there were a couple of brickbats as well. Many were worried about potential copyright infringement and privacy violations. And then, the lawsuits began.
There was a lawsuit filed that alleged OpenAI copied text from books without getting consent, crediting the copyright holder or even compensating them. Another lawsuit claimed that OpenAI's models collect people's personal information illegally. It was claimed that ChatGPT could accurately summarize books, which may mean that the LLM has read the books.
And there have been accusations that OpenAI is gathering people's images, music preferences, locations, financial details and more by being integrated into platforms, like Spotify, Snapchat, Slack and Microsoft Teams. And then, the New York Times sued OpenAI for copyright infringement, becoming the first major American media organization to do so, contending that millions of articles published by NYT were used to train chatbots to replace the outlet as a source of information. Comedian Sarah Silverman, also, joined the lawsuits accusing OpenAI of having ingested her memoir as a training text for AI programmes. Authors, like John Grisham, George RR Martin, Michael Connelly, Jodi Picoult and others are some of the authors who have sued OpenAI.
So, why the OpenAI dislike? Are people just getting on the bandwagon of lawsuits? Why can't everyone just get along?