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Authors Guild and 17 novelists sue OpenAI over training GPT on their books

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Source: Authors Guild

The Authors Guild and 17 authors, including John Grisham, George R.R. Martin, Jodi Picoult and Jonathan Franzen, filed a class action against OpenAI in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on 20 September 2023. They claim their books were copied from pirate ebook sites into GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 training data. An amended complaint added Microsoft on 4 December 2023.

Why it matters

Fiction writers as a class challenged the use of pirated books in training large language models, putting OpenAI’s data sources in front of a New York federal court.

When
20 Sep 2023
ID
WTA-N-2023-0096
Who
Authors Guild, OpenAI, Microsoft; John Grisham, George R.R. Martin, Jodi Picoult
Authority
US District Court, S.D. New York
Target
OpenAI; Microsoft
Action
class action
Status
open · Enforcement ledger

Summary by wheresthe.ai, from Authors Guild. Checked against the source on 9 Oct 2026.

Read the original at Authors Guild

Source copy: download the page as saved on 18 Oct 2026 (PDF). Document the source offers: document 1 (PDF). Also held by the Internet Archive.

Next stop on this Storyline: Led toNew York Times sues OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement

Cite this story

WTA-N-2023-0096: “Authors Guild and 17 novelists sue OpenAI over training GPT on their books.” wheresthe.ai, 20 Sep 2023. https://wheresthe.ai/d/us-authors-guild-v-openai-filed-2023-09/ (source: Authors Guild).

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