When two elderly friends named Nick learned that ChatGPT might be misappropriating their lifelong work, they enlisted a son-in-law to sue the companies behind the AI chatbot.
Veteran journalists Nicholas Gage, 84, and Nicholas Basbanes, 81, both residents of the same Massachusetts town, have each spent decades in journalism and authorship.
Gage chronicled his tragic family history and his search for the truth about his mother’s death in a bestselling memoir, which inspired John Malkovich’s portrayal of him in the 1985 film “Eleni.” Basbanes transitioned from daily newspaper reporting to writing well-regarded books on literary culture.
Basbanes was the first to experiment with AI chatbots, finding them impressive but prone to inaccuracies and lacking proper attribution. The friends shared their concerns and filed a lawsuit earlier this year, aiming to represent writers whose copyrighted work they claim has been systematically exploited by OpenAI and its partner Microsoft.
“It’s highway robbery,” Gage commented in an interview from his office beside his 18th-century farmhouse in central Massachusetts.
The lawsuit is now part of a larger case seeking class-action status, involving prominent authors like John Grisham, Jodi Picoult, and George R. R. Martin. This case is overseen by the same New York federal judge handling similar copyright claims from major media outlets such as The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and Mother Jones.
These cases contend that OpenAI, with Microsoft’s support, utilized vast amounts of written content to train AI chatbots to generate human-like text, without permission or compensation to the original authors.
“If they can get it for nothing, why pay for it?” Gage said. “But it’s grossly unfair and very harmful to the written word.”
OpenAI and Microsoft did not respond to requests for comment but have been defending against these allegations in court and publicly. Other AI companies are also facing legal challenges from various creators, including visual artists and music labels, who argue that generative AI profits are built on misappropriation.
Mustafa Suleyman, head of Microsoft’s AI division, defended AI industry practices at the Aspen Ideas Festival, arguing that training AI on publicly available internet content is protected by the “fair use” doctrine of U.S. copyright law.
“The social contract of that content since the ’90s has been that it is fair use,” Suleyman stated. “Anyone can copy it, recreate with it, reproduce with it. That has been freeware, if you like.”
He acknowledged the complexity of situations where organizations explicitly object to content scraping by tech companies. “I think that’s going to work its way through the courts,” he said.
The cases are still in the discovery phase and are expected to extend into 2025. Meanwhile, some professionals concerned about AI business practices have sought private deals for technology companies to license their archives, while others continue to fight.
Frank Pine, executive editor of MediaNews Group, which publishes numerous newspapers including the Denver Post and Orange County Register, emphasized the irreplaceable nature of traditional journalism. “Somebody had to go out and interview real people in the real world and conduct real research by poring over documents and then synthesizing those documents and coming up with a way to render them in clear and simple prose,” he said. “An AI app is never going to leave the office and go downtown where there’s a fire and cover that fire.”
The Massachusetts duo’s lawsuit has been integrated into a consolidated case with other nonfiction and fiction writers represented by the Authors Guild. This means Gage and Basbanes are unlikely to testify in any upcoming trial. However, they felt compelled to stand up for their profession.
Gage, who fled Greece as a 9-year-old after his mother’s execution during the country’s civil war, settled in Worcester, Massachusetts. Inspired by a teacher, he pursued writing and gained a reputation for his investigative reporting on organized crime and political corruption for The New York Times and other papers.
Basbanes, also of Greek descent, admired Gage when they first connected in the early 1970s. The two established a lasting friendship, with Basbanes noting he has known Gage longer than his wife of 49 years.
While Basbanes hasn’t delved into his own story as deeply as Gage, he acknowledges the laborious process of crafting well-researched writing. His 1995 book “A Gentle Madness,” which took years of research, is now housed in over 1,400 libraries.
“I love that ‘A Gentle Madness’ is in so many libraries,” Basbanes said. “This is what a writer strives for — to be read. But you also write to earn a living, and as long as that’s your intellectual property, you deserve to be compensated fairly for your efforts.”
Gage took a significant risk by leaving his job at the Times and incurring $160,000 in debt to uncover the truth about his mother’s death.
“I tracked down everyone who was in the village when my mother was killed,” he said. “They had been scattered all over Eastern Europe. So it cost a lot of money and time. I had no assurance that I would get that money back. But the importance of my mother’s story made the risks and effort worthwhile.”
In summary, Gage and Basbanes believe ChatGPT could hinder the future of investigative journalism. Gage warned, “Publications are going to die. Newspapers are going to die. Young people with talent are not going to go into writing. I’m 84 years old. I don’t know if this will be settled in my lifetime, but it’s crucial to find a solution.”
