George Martin Does Anything Other Than Writing: Now, He's into Legal Battles with AI
The Winds of Winter, you say? How about The Winds of Lawsuits against those who dare use artificial intelligence to complete your work while you’re out there chilling?
George Martin ’s stance on the topic of copyright infringement has always been clear: the author even opposes fanfiction as in his eyes, it directly violates creators’ ownership. But fanfiction involves actual human beings who purposely build upon someone else’s work; what if it’s an AI we’re talking about? How to tackle that?
The Song of Ice and Fire author has a simple answer: you sue the AI’s creators.
Martin has always been vocal about his AI-related concerns, but things got hot after a fan used ChatGPT, the notorious text-based neural network, to create its own version of The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring — the last two books of the author’s The Song of Ice and Fire series that are he’s still working on…allegedly.
George Martin immediately took this case to court, but not against the fan. The author joined forces with some of his colleagues and filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, the company that developed ChatGPT, and accused them of copyright infringement.
This might sound counterintuitive, but GRRM has a point. Based on the way ChatGPT managed to coherently continue his books’ plotlines, it’s easy to draw the conclusion that the neural network studied his works. Then, the AI used this knowledge to create new books thus directly violating his ownership of the material.
Together with other writers, George Martin plans to not only achieve a punishment for OpenAI but also demand some coherent legal regulation of such cases. Despite being rather dramatic about it, The Song of Ice and Fire author is right to call this case a “mass-scale copyright infringement,” and such things must be regulated.
While we agree with GRRM on this particular case, we can’t help but point out that no one would’ve used an AI to write The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring if the author did it himself. It’s been over a dozen years since A Dance with Dragons, Mr. Martin. There’s been quite enough time not for just one book but for an entire franchise.
But apparently, legal lawsuits are more fun.
Source: THR