OpenAI to Cover ChatGPT Users’ Copyright Lawsuit Costs

OpenAI joins Google, Microsoft, and other platforms in providing legal support to their users in the event that they are sued for copyright infringement.

According to OpenAI, legal fees associated with copyright infringement will be covered for business-tier ChatGPT users who find themselves facing legal action.

OpenAI's pledge, known as the Copyright Shield, is limited to its developer platform and business-tier ChatGPT Enterprise users.

OpenAI does not provide coverage for ChatGPT Plus and free users.

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, stated on November 6 at the organization's inaugural developer conference, DevDay, “We will step in and defend our customers and pay the costs incurred if you face legal claims around copyright infringement and this applies to both ChatGPT Enterprise and the API.”

OpenAI joins Microsoft, Amazon, and Google in extending legal support to users who are accused of copyright infringement.

Adobe and Shutterstock, both of which offer generative AI-powered stock images, also affirmed the identical commitment.

OpenAI also announced during DevDay that users will have the ability to generate personalized ChatGPT models, which they will be able to sell on an upcoming app store along with a new and updated AI model dubbed ChatGPT-4 Turbo.

OpenAI is the subject of numerous lawsuits that assert it trained its AI models with copyrighted material.

In July, Sarah Silverman, an author and comedian, and two others filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that the training data of ChatGPT contains their copyrighted work that was obtained from unauthorized online libraries.

At least two additional lawsuits were filed against OpenAI in September.

Microsoft and OpenAI were accused in a class action lawsuit of training models with stolen private information.

At the same time, the Author's Guild sued OpenAI on charges of “systematic theft” of copyrighted material.