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By Andrew Richard Albanese, Editor-in-Chief<\/p>\n
Agroup of textbook authors has filed another class action lawsuit in New York, alleging that OpenAI\u2019s unauthorized use of copyrighted textbooks to train its LLMs (including works downloaded from illegal pirate sites) threatens to \u201cdilute\u201d or \u201cerode\u201d the market for textbooks and educational materials. In July, the authors also filed a similar suit in California against Meta<\/a>.<\/p>\n In an August 14 complaint<\/a>, the authors (led by lead plaintiff Michael Sullivan on behalf a potential class of all textbook authors similarly situated) allege that OpenAI\u2014with support from Microsoft, which is also a defendant in the suit\u2014illegally copied thousands of textbooks to train its AI; removed the identifying copyright information to \u201cconceal\u201d their actions; and that the resulting service now threatens to \u201cdisplace\u201d the market for new and updated textbooks.<\/p>\n The suit asks for a judgment finding copyright infringement, monetary damages, and injunctive relief to block \u201cfurther infringement.\u201d<\/p>\n The suit points out that a licensing market for textbook content either exists or could be developed that would allow textbooks to be used in training in exchange for \u201cfair compensation,\u201d but that the defendants \u201cbypassed\u201d such licensing efforts, including by downloading \u201cmassive\u201d amounts of textbooks from notorious pirate sites. Furthermore, because textbooks cover \u201cacademic fields and subfields in engaging, effective, and up-to-date ways,\u201d they are \u201cuniquely valuable in the training of LLMs,\u201d the complaint asserts.<\/p>\n \u201cLLMs threaten the textbook market by destroying the incentives for textbook authors to continue writing and revising high quality textbooks, to the detriment of the textbook authors on whose work the LLMs rely,\u201d the complaint explains, adding that increasingly sophisticated generative AI agents are poised to \u201cdisplace human-authored textbooks with cheaper or no-cost AI-generated textbooks or textbook equivalents.\u201d<\/p>\n If LLMs are allowed to \u201ccontinually update their content by ingesting new editions of textbooks as they come out\u201d instructors and schools \u201cmay consider dropping textbook adoptions altogether\u201d in favor of \u201csubstitutes\u201d that rely on the use of LLM models, the complaint states.<\/p>\n