Key Points:
- OpenAI is engaged in a legal dispute with the Author’s Guild regarding the inclusion of six current and former employees, including ex-co-founder Ilya Sutskever, as custodians in a copyright case.
- The Author’s Guild insists that these individuals hold crucial evidence, but OpenAI opposes their inclusion.
- The lawsuit stems from broader allegations that OpenAI used copyrighted books to train its AI models without permission.
OpenAI is pushing back against efforts to include its former co-founder’s files in a prominent copyright lawsuit. In the ongoing legal battle between OpenAI and the Author’s Guild, tensions have risen over which employee records should be included in the discovery process.
The conflict centers around the Author’s Guild’s request to designate six current and former OpenAI employees as “custodians” of evidence. Among them is Ilya Sutskever, co-founder and former chief scientist of OpenAI, who the Author’s Guild argues may possess key information related to the case.
In a letter filed in New York federal court, the Author’s Guild disclosed that both parties had agreed on 24 custodians but reached an impasse regarding the inclusion of these six individuals. The Guild’s legal team is now seeking a court order to compel OpenAI to include the disputed employees in the discovery process.
Key Figures in Dispute
In addition to Sutskever, the six disputed employees include Qiming Yuan, lead for pre-training data; technical staff members Jong Wook Kim and Shantanu Jain; former research scientist Cullen O’Keefe; and former science communicator Andrew Mayne. Mayne has publicly highlighted the significance of books as valuable training data for AI.
The Author’s Guild contends that these individuals hold critical documents that could shed light on the unauthorized use of copyrighted material. Sutskever, who left OpenAI earlier this year following internal strife, is considered especially relevant due to his deep involvement in the company’s AI development.
OpenAI has not publicly disclosed its reasons for opposing the inclusion of these individuals, but it has requested that all six exhibits attached to the Author’s Guild’s letter be fully redacted. The redactions reportedly protect proprietary source code and sensitive internal discussions regarding the training and testing of ChatGPT models.
This lawsuit is just one part of a larger legal challenge facing OpenAI. The plaintiffs, including renowned authors George R. R. Martin, Jonathan Franzen, and David Baldacci, claim that OpenAI unlawfully used their books to train its AI models, violating copyright laws.
As the case unfolds, the court’s decision on the inclusion of these key figures could play a significant role in determining the outcome of this high-stakes legal battle.
