OpenAI Gets Some of Sarah Silverman’s Suit Cut in Mixed Ruling

OpenAI Inc. must face a claim that it violated California unfair competition law by using copyrighted books from comedian Sarah Silverman and other authors to train ChatGPT without permission.

But US District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín on Monday also dismissed a number of Silverman and her coplaintiffs’ other legal claims, including allegations of vicarious copyright infringement, violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, negligence, and unjust enrichment.

The judge gave the authors the opportunity to amend their proposed class action by March 13 to fix the defects in the complaint.

The core of the lawsuit remains alive, as OpenAI’s motion to dismiss, filed last summer, didn’t address Silverman’s claim of direct copyright infringement for copying millions of books across the internet without permission. Courts haven’t yet determined whether using copyrighted work to train AI models falls under copyright law’s fair use doctrine, shielding the companies from liability.

Although Martínez-Olguín allowed the unfair competition claim to advance, she said the claim could be preempted by the federal Copyright Act, which prohibits state law claims that allege the same violation as a copyright claim.

“As OpenAI does not raise preemption, the Court does not consider it,” said the judge, who sits on the US District Court for the Northern District of California.

The ruling mirrors one from a similar copyright case that Silverman brought in the same court against Meta Platforms Inc. over its AI model LLaMA. The judge in that case dismissed most of Silverman’s ancillary claims, and the direct copyright infringement claim advanced to the discovery phase of the case.

OpenAI is facing copyright lawsuits from dozens of authors around the country. The Authors Guild, the country’s largest professional writers’ group, and The New York Times sued OpenAI for copyright infringement in Manhattan federal court last year.

Joseph Saveri Law Firm LLP and Matthew Butterick represent Silverman and the authors. Latham & Watkins LLP and Morrison & Foerster LLP represent OpenAI.

The case is Tremblay v. OpenAI Inc., N.D. Cal., No. 3:23-cv-03223, dismissed in part 2/12/24.