The launch of the Chinese AI system, DeepSeek, has been accompanied by accusations of theft of information from OpenAI who are accused by large numbers of authors of stealing their content.
David Sacks has stated that there is “substantial evidence” that the Chinese AI company DeepSeek “distilled” knowledge from OpenAI’s models. Sacks, Trump’s crypto and AI champion.has compared this process to theft. Unlike the actual theft that OpenAI committed involving the work of large numbers of authors, no evidence of actual theft by DeepSeek has been presented.
Staff for Microsoft observed accounts that ‘might’ be associated with DeepSeek had extracted large amounts of data using an OpenAI API connection system.
An open letter signed by over 8500 authors including Margaret Atwood, Dan Brown and Jodi Picoult has called on companies responsible for generative AI applications, such as ChatGPT and Bard, to cease using their works without proper authorization or compensation. Authors Mona Awad and Paul Tremblay have issued a lawsuit against OpenAI (responsible for ChatGPT), claiming that the organization breached copyright law when it used their work to train the ChatGPT system.
In 2024 a Senate committee recommended that tech companies be forced to pay publishers, authors and artists for the use of their work in the training of AI systems. That has not happened yet. It seems unlikely that it will happen soon with people like Sachs close to Trump.