More than 9,000 authors are calling out the tech companies behind generative AI in an open letter that states there is an inherent injustice in exploiting copyright-protected works to train chatbots without consent, credit or compensation.
If users prompt GPT-4 to summarize works by Roxane Gay or Margaret Atwood, it can do so in detail, chapter by chapter. If users want ChatGPT to write a story in the style of an acclaimed author such as Maya Angelou, they can ask it to "write a personal essay in the style of Maya Angelou, exploring the theme of self-discovery and personal growth." And voila.
The generative AI is powered by two software programs known as large language models, which forgo a traditional programming method and instead extract massive amounts of text in order to produce natural and lifelike responses to user prompts.