'Game of Thrones' writer sues ChatGPT creator

American author George R.R. Martin of the fantasy novel ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’, which was adapted into the HBO series ‘Game of Thrones’, is among 17 writers, who are suing ChatGPT developer, Open AI.

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Earlier this week, 17 blockbuster authors including Geroge R.R. Martin, David Baldacci, Jonathan Franzen, John Grisham and Jodi Picoult among others, filed a lawsuit in the federal court of Manhattan, New York, against the AI generative company.

The Authors Guild in the lawsuit alleged Microsoft-backed Open AI of a ‘systemic theft on a mass scale’ by using their copyrighted content without permission to train its AI models, including ChatGPT.

For the unversed, ChatGPT and other similar large language models (LLMs) including Google Bard learn by analysing a massive amount of data usually available via online sources.

Citing the ChatGPT searches for authors, the lawsuit alleged that the program generated ‘an infringing, unauthorised, and detailed outline’ for a ‘Game of Thrones’ prequel titled ‘A Dawn of Direwolves’ and even used the existing characters from Martin’s successful book series ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’.

In a statement, the Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger said, “It is imperative that we stop this theft in its tracks or we will destroy our incredible literary culture, which feeds many other creative industries in the US.”

She also stated, “Great books are generally written by those who spend their careers and, indeed, their lives, learning and perfecting their crafts. To preserve our literature, authors must have the ability to control if and how their works are used by generative AI.”

However, the company’s spokesperson defended that it respects ‘the rights of writers and authors’ and believes in the mutual benefits of AI (artificial intelligence) technology.

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