OpenAI denies infringement allegations in author copyright cases

OpenAI has responded in California federal court to allegations that it misused the work of authors including Michael Chabon, Ta-Nehisi Coates and comedian Sarah Silverman to train its artificial-intelligence language model.

The Microsoft-backed AI company said in an answer to the complaints on Tuesday that it makes fair use of copyrighted content to teach models like the one underlying its popular chatbot ChatGPT to create original material.

“The models learn, as we all do, from what has come before,” OpenAI said in its filing. “The fair use defense exists for precisely that reason: to encourage and allow the development of new ideas that build on earlier ones.”