Comedian Sarah Silverman and two authors sue Meta and OpenAI for copyright infringement

Lawsuits allege Facebook's parent company and ChatGPT maker used copyrighted material to train chatbots

The lawsuits underscore the legal risks developers of chat bots face when using troves of copyrighted material to create apps that deliver realistic responses to user prompts. AP

Comedian Sarah Silverman and two authors have filed copyright infringement lawsuits against Meta Platforms and OpenAI for allegedly using their content without permission to train artificial intelligence language models.

The proposed class action lawsuits filed by Ms Silverman, Richard Kadrey and Christopher Golden in San Francisco federal court on Friday allege Facebook's parent company Meta and ChatGPT maker OpenAI used copyrighted material to train chatbots.

Meta and OpenAI, a private company backed by Microsoft, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Sunday.

The lawsuits underscore the legal risks developers of chatbots face when using troves of copyrighted material to create apps that deliver realistic responses to user prompts.

Ms Silverman, Mr Kadrey and Mr Golden allege Meta and OpenAI used their books without authorisation to develop their large language models, which their creators pitch as powerful tools for automating tasks by replicating human conversation.

In their case against Meta, the plaintiffs allege that leaked information about the company’s artificial intelligence business shows their work was used without permission.

The lawsuit against OpenAI alleges that summaries of the plaintiffs’ work generated by ChatGPT indicate the bot was trained on their copyrighted content.

“The summaries get some details wrong” but still show that ChatGPT “retains knowledge of particular works in the training data set,” the lawsuit says.

The lawsuits seek unspecified monetary damages on behalf of a nationwide class of copyright owners whose works were allegedly infringed.