An anti-piracy group representing major Japanese video game developers such as Square Enix, FromSoftware and Bandai Namco has issued a warning OpenAIclaiming that OpenAI may have committed copyright infringement. This claim is just one of many recently hit by AI and LLM companies like OpenAI.
OpenAI is responsible for creating AI/LLM services such as ChatGPT and the Sora 2 video generator. Recently, there have been criticisms and concerns about the materials these services were trained on and whether OpenAI has the legal right to use them. Now, some Japanese game developers are noticing that the Sora 2 video generator seems to be producing content that is similar to their own.
OpenAI faces copyright infringement charges from Japan
An anti-piracy organization in Japan called the Content Overseas Distribution Association, or CODA, has written to OpenAI to stop using its members' content to train AI models. CODA states that it has “confirmed” that “much” of the content created by OpenAI's Sora 2 strongly resembles existing Japanese content, and that CODA considers the act of “replication during the machine learning process” to be a potential copyright infringement. CODA represents a number of Japanese media companies, including game developers Square Enix, Bandai Namco and FromSoftware, as well as anime companies such as Aniplex and Studio Ghibli. In particular, Studio Ghibli has been the subject of a recent AI art trend that remade uploaded user images in the Studio Ghibli art style.
CODA pointed out that OpenAI has an opt-out system, but that it does not comply with Japanese copyright law. While the US has fair use rules that often allow the use of existing content as long as it is used in a transformative way, Japan does not. Instead, permission must be sought in advance, which OpenAI did not appear to seek before allegedly using Japanese copyrighted works as teaching material. As a result, CODA specifically requests that the groups it represents not have their content used for machine learning without permission, and requests a response from OpenAI regarding copyright violations related to Sora 2.
At this time, OpenAI has not issued a public response to the claim. The company already has a lot on its plate, with the recent launch of the Sora 2 video generator and major deals with companies like Amazon. But it's also facing a lot of backlash, with publications like The New York Times, author groups and George RR Martin suing or threatening to sue over similar claims. On the other hand, some game developers have already decided to use AI in game development, such as EA.
Source: CODA
