German children’s book publisher sues OpenAI over copyright

Publishing giant Penguin Random House announced a lawsuit against OpenAI on Tuesday, alleging that the AI-powered ChatGPT violated copyright by mimicking and reproducing content from a German children’s book series.

ChatGPT readily churned out illustrations and other content from Ingo Siegner’s “Coconut the Little Dragon” series after simple user prompts “that are virtually indistinguishable from the original”, according to a statement from its German-language publishing group, Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe.