Australian authors are cheering a United States-based class action lawsuit — featuring high profile novelists like George RR Martin and John Grisham — and hope successful litigation will protect their own copyrighted content from being appropriated by AI language models like ChatGPT.

The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday, alleges OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, has infringed on registered copyright through “systematic theft on a mass scale.”

Olivia Lanchester, CEO of the Australian Society of Authors, said it is deeply unfair that large scale appropriation of copyrighted works has taken place.

“To the best of my knowledge, the copying of those works hasn’t occurred with Australia, so there are jurisdictional challenges to commencing litigation here,” she said.

“We are absolutely cheering on the Authors Guild and feel incredibly supportive of their action and hope it will succeed.”

A Song of Ice and Fire author George RR Martin is one of several high-profile writers suing OpenAI. Photo: Getty

Writers, source-code owners and visual artists have now launched multiple lawsuits against OpenAI and other technology companies for using their work to train their language models without permission.

‘Once in a lifetime risk’

Dervla McTiernan, a best-selling Australian crime novelist, called the way language models use copyrighted material “outright theft.”

“There is an increasing gap between the few writers who are able to make a success of a writing career and most writers who are working incredibly hard but not getting anywhere,” she said.

“There is a very real risk that the channels through which books are sold and marketed would become clogged with AI generated work, which would be poor quality, but it would be more difficult for individuals writers to access the market.”

Writing isn’t a lucrative career for most who partake in one of the oldest professions on the planet, with the average Australian author earning an average of $18,200 a year from their work.

McTiernan said without action the wealth gap between writers and those benefiting from AI technology will only increase.

“These things can’t write well yet, but assuming they are going to get better — as we are told they will — there is a risk of once in a human history transfer of industry and ability from many people to a handful of large language models owned by the richest people in the world,” McTiernan said.

“The ability to write, instead of being something that takes a lifetime of craft and effort to learn and not to mention the human experience that goes into writing, will be taken from many to a few, accelerating the wealth gap.”

Creatives push back

While authors are pushing back against language models, they aren’t the first creatives to litigate against technology companies using their works, likeness and even voices.

Lanchester said if these cases are success, it will force companies like OpenAI to rethink their practices.

“Hopefully, the wave of litigation might place pressure on all developers to think about how they can negotiate with creators reasonably, seek permission and provide appropriate compensation,” she said.

“It’s not about stopping or banning it – it’s about developing it in a way that doesn’t unfairly exploit the work of very vulnerable creators who are already struggling to earn a living.”

Comedian Sarah Silverman is suing both OpenAI and Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, for copyright infringement after the companies trained their models on illegally-acquired sources.

Actor, comedian and writer Stephen Fry has also raised the dangers of technology after discovering his voice was recreated using AI trained on audiobooks he narrated.

Stephen Fry has spoken out about the risk of unregulated AI. Photo: David Levenson/Getty

Lanchester said she wants technology companies to develop codes of conduct for the use of copyrighted material, and “pressure be put on big tech to negotiate” with creators for use of their material.

“That approach would support creativity, rather than exploit it,” she said.

“There is a role for government pressure and community pressure that recognises and values the creative and intellectual labour of our authors.”