Book publisher Chicken Soup for the Soul sued several Big Tech companies in California federal court late Tuesday for allegedly misusing its content to train their artificial intelligence systems.
The publisher said that Apple, Google, Nvidia, Meta Platforms, OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity AI, and Elon Musk’s xAI used pirated copies of its books to teach their chatbots to respond to human prompts.
Reuters:
The publisher’s complaint is unique in targeting several tech juggernauts at once. The lawsuit was filed by attorneys at law firm Freedman Normand Friedland, who have brought a similar ongoing case against Big Tech companies on behalf of writer John Carreyrou and other authors.
“The action holds major AI companies accountable for exploiting hundreds of copyrighted works, sourced from illicit databases, without permission,” Freedman Normand Friedland partner Kyle Roche said in a statement. “The message is clear: companies cannot build billion-dollar technologies on stolen creative expression.”
Chicken Soup for the Soul publishes a series of inspirational books by the same name that have sold more than 500 million copies worldwide. Its lawsuit said that the companies downloaded bootleg copies of its books from “shadow libraries” to use in AI training.
MacDailyNews Take: Trained on Chicken Soup for the Soul books. Now ChatGPT thinks the secret to happiness is fowl broth and bad life advice.
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I hope they are awarded a zillion dollars.