OpenAI Submits Calif. Order as Supplemental Authority to Back Its DCMA Defense

Defendant OpenAI submitted as supplemental authority Tuesday a statement of recent decision (docket 3:23-cv-03223) from the U.S. District Court for Northern California dismissing similar copyright infringement claims against it involving AI models in Digital Millennial Copyright Act lawsuits in the same court (see 2307200047). OpenAI said the decision was relevant to its motion to dismiss related class actions brought by Sarah Silverman and Paul Tremblay alleging OpenAI infringed their works in developing its AI content. In Andersen v. Stability AI, U.S. District Court Judge William Orrick found that “'it is simply not plausible,’ that every output of a Generative AI model constitutes a derivative work absent ‘substantial similarity’ type allegations,” noted OpenAI’s statement. Orrick said that to state a claim under Section 1202 of the DCMA, "each plaintiff must identify 'the exact type of [copyright management information] included' in their works and 'allege plausible facts' regarding how that CMI was allegedly removed or altered.” The plaintiffs in the Tremblay and Silverman cases allege OpenAI and several of its subsidiaries violated their rights under the DCMA by removing copyright management information (CMI) from their infringed works and redistributing those works via ChatGPT without CMI or with false CMI.