Sarah Silverman Joins Lawsuits Against OpenAI and Meta For Copyright Infringement

Sarah Silverman has joined class-action lawsuits against OpenAI and Meta accusing the companies of copyright infringement, The New York Times reports.

OpenAI is an American artificial intelligence (AI) research laboratory consisting of the non-profit OpenAI Incorporated and its for-profit subsidiary corporation OpenAI Limited Partnership. Meta is the company owns and operates Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp, among other products and services.

Silverman alleges that the companies "copied and ingested" her work, including her memoir "The Bedwetter" that was later turned into a play, and used them to train their artificial intelligence programs.

The lawsuits were filed on Friday, with Silverman joining alongside authors Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey, in the San Francisco Division of the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California.

“Their copyrighted materials were copied and ingested as part of training,” the lawsuit claims. “Many of the plaintiffs’ books appear in the dataset that Meta admitted to using.”

The plaintiffs are seeking awards for damages and injunctive relief that might include changes to the LLaMA and ChatGPT programs.

Read the original story on The New York Times.

Sarah Silverman is a two-time Emmy-winning comedian, actress, writer, and producer. She currently hosts her weekly and critically acclaimed podcast “The Sarah Silverman Podcast” and she recently wrapped production on Netflix’s “Maestro.”

On stage, Silverman continues to cement her status as a force in stand-up comedy and is currently traveling around North America on her “Sarah Silverman: Grow Some Lips” tour. The previously released Netflix standup special “A Speck of Dust,” culminated in two Emmy Award nominations and a Grammy Award nomination. Her hour-long HBO standup special “Sarah Silverman: We Are Miracles,” earned her a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special as well as an additional Primetime Emmy Award and Writers Guild Award nominations. Silverman also made an impressive splash with her concert-meets-comedy film “Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic.”

This past Spring, Silverman’s off-Broadway musical adaptation of her 2010 New York Times bestselling memoir "The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee" had a sold-out run with the Atlantic Theatre Company. 

Silverman previously hosted the Emmy® Award and Writers Guild Award nominated Hulu series “I Love You, America” and continues to lend her voice to several animated series, including “Bob’s Burgers.”