George R.R. Martin and a cohort of other authors have taken OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, to court – and, so far, they're winning.
Things have taken a positive turn for Martin and the other plaintiffs (i.e. the people suing OpenAI) because two new theories of infringement have been advanced against the tech giant. That means the plaintiffs now have three different ways of winning the case. The damages awarded for copyright infringement could reach up to $150,000.
The first argument is that using copyrighted books to train AI models counts as infringement, while a newer one relates to books being pirated from shadow libraries – some of which are used for training. The third argument is that answers generated by ChatGPT are substantially similar to the books they're trained on.
"The prior class complaints asserted a cause of action for copyright infringement and alleged that OpenAI impermissibly downloaded and reproduced plaintiffs’ books," the judge wrote (via The Hollywood Reporter) of the third claim. "The fact that many of the allegations in the prior class complaints suggested that the ultimate purpose of the reproduction was to train OpenAI’s LLMs is not dispositive."
The publication reports that, per the court, a reader could "easily conclude" that detailed summaries are "substantially similar" to Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire books because they "convey the overall tone and feel of the original work by parroting the plot, characters, and themes of the original."
The next stage in the case will involve a summary judgment, where the court decides which claims will go to trial.
Meanwhile, we're next set to return to the world of Westeros in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which is based on Martin's Dunk and Egg novellas and is set 100 years before the events of Game of Thrones. The show will follow the adventures of the hedge knight Ser Duncan the Tall and his eager young squire, Egg.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms premieres on HBO on January 18, 2026. While we wait, fill out your watchlist with our picks of the other best new TV shows coming our way.
