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When I left the Washington Post in 2023, my colleagues and I were worried AI would hoover up our work and enable "zombies" to churn out stories based on our reporting and writing styles. Today WaPo announced a partnership with OpenAI. And here it is: Zombie Gillian Brockell. I DID NOT WRITE THIS.

When I took the history reporter job, I told my editor I would never "both sides" the Civil War, Confederates or slavery. I never did. But here, ChatGPT (pic 1) has turned my work (pics 2,3) into whitewashed pablum and put MY FUCKING NAME on it. I am livid, I am shaking. I don't know what to do.

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THE POINT OF MY LIFE'S WORK IS THAT LOST CAUSE "HISTORY" IS MYTHOLOGY. It isn't a difference of opinion, it is literally not true. And I have always written like a salty bitch. My editor would ask me to turn up (or sometimes down lol) the salty bitch. Where the fuck is the salty bitch?????

Post an article online about how ChatGP stole your work and then misinterpreted it. Use lots of search words that would link it to this piece so it will then start saying “we lied in this article and stole the original authors work”.

Genuinely consider suing, or at least consult with someone about it. Slam dunk defamation and I bet you could find lawyers who’d be champing at the bit to take it.

This is offensive on a deeply human level and everyone responsible should be ashamed. They won't be, since they are obviously soulless lizard people, but they should be.

a) Sue b) Sue c) Find the master plug for OpenAI and pull it, then (wearing safety gloves) jam a fork in the outlet and short circuit the whole building d) Raze the building to the ground e) Plant trees over its remains f) Sue

Sorry, but I don’t follow. Was it you or someone else who asked the AI to produce this? If not you then who? And if you then are you more upset that it was able to produce anything at all or that it didn’t do a better job?

Just so I’m clear: *you* entered the prompt into ChatGPT & generated the article? If so, it didn’t exist until you asked it to be born. *You* are the one who put your name on it, not AI. Can WaPo do it? Sure. But thousands of writers have been ringing alarm bells about this for a very long time.

Demand that your name be removed from this, insist on a written apology for having your work AI-fucked into your named (not) “voice” that isn’t buried in the last page of the paper, and then get an attorney and go after those twatwaffles, Gillian. Fuck them and the phallic rocket they rode in on.

It's difficult to tell. The UI looks similar. When I tried it (apologies to Gillian Brockell). It's possible it's down to the version, but my version uses the suffix *"-style"*. It's possible this is a screengrab from the WP optimised LLM.

Under U.S. copyright law, work created by an employee within the scope of their employment is considered “work made for hire.” This means: • The employer (the newspaper) is the legal author and copyright holder. • The reporter has no ownership of the material they write as part of their job. (1/2)

You could sue, but you entered into a transaction with WaPo and were compensated, so there’s no question of ownership. Unless you had a “no derivative works” clause (unlikely), then you have no standing for a case against WaPo. You could try to argue impersonation or slander against OpenAI, but GL

Okay but you asked ChatGPT for this output. You created that piece. You published it online. This isn’t to strawman you, but it’s a really important distinction because HUMANS have to be responsible for AI. If someone did this to you, that would be a moment to feel livid. That didn’t happen.

They can walk and chew gum at the same time. At the very least, make sure it's on their plate so they can try to address it when they come up for air. This is a huge deal. If it's happening to you, it's happening to others. This is how these people blur the truth and reality.

You need an IP attorney who can look at this from an identity theft perspective where your value as a respected writer is being damaged. a combination of false attribution & defamation. It would certainly be cutting new ground. In DC, you might contact Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts for a referral.

Also, you sue everyone and everything, such as WaPo, Bezos, and anything direct or tangential to the AI. Also, call the Authors Guild in NY, which is working against this stuff. If I were to find my late husband’s name used like this, I think his celebrity registration under CA law might help me.

What happens if you prompt something similar without a request for your style? Thinking that if they pull archive prompts what is the risk that they have your material in there? This is a risk for the journalists as well, they don’t want to plagiarise.

The people telling you to sue seem to be confused by the way you framed this. They think it's a direct result of the WaPo deal or something that was actually published by WaPo. This is something ChatGPT could already do, that you asked it to do.

Not a lawyer myself, but I think you may want to talk to a few lawyers. Your local and state bar associations should have resources to connect you with attorneys, but usually you need to know what kind of lawyer you'd need. In lieu of any further insights, I'd personally start with a labor lawyer.

Not a lawyer. Consult one. But there are two angles here: 1) Defamation by OpenAI. That has some legal grounding/similar cases already. 2) WaPo's deal with OpenAI. Note, as others are pointing out, this output is independent of said deal, but the deal is way more concerning. What matters there...

...is what your contract said they can do with your work. So yeah, consult a lawyer about that, but even if this is a "legal" usage, thank you for speaking up and writers need to ban together to MAKE it an illegal usage (i.e., cannot sell work for AI training by default, without explicit permission)

WaPo made a deal with ChatGPT, so it is hard for it to then say it has nothing to do with what ChatGPT is doing with its work, and if WaPo itself posted this article you could very obviously sue, so whatever attorney you would get for that, I'd get for this. And a consultation is probably free.

Misrepresentation, diminishing value of your work, damage to reputation. Good lawyer will pull the list. By adding your byline, this hasn't created a lookalike, but a weak forgery. Like if an art student whipped up something in the style of Klimt and then told people it was an authentic work.

Eventually, as search engines get fed by the same AI puking up content, nothing on the internet will be reliable. Words and images made by dumb machines will be signed and scattered among the legitimate works, and then the fake stuff will bury it.

I think it falls under the umbrella similar to defamation - it is invasion of privacy (misappropriation or appropriation and/or false light). A first amendment lawyer should be a good option or a general practice tort litigator.

Or, imagine going to a WaPo employee and asking him what you asked ChatGPT. Will you sue him because he tried to - badly - imitate you, at you own request, on the argument that the WaPo management could ask him to do the same?

Mmm, it is akin to a painter, let's say XX, going to a counterfeiter and commission him to make a painting in his (XX) style and sign it as XX and give it only to him (XX). I do not see how XX could sue the counterfeiter? The ability to potentially commit a forgery is not a crime.

The Authors' Guild has been organizing a class-action suit against OpenAI and ChatGPT for unauthorized use—you didn't agree to have your work train generative AI. It's one thing for WaPo to use/reprint/repackage your work, but not this. This would be under copyright law/intellectual property.

Don’t sue, but request an opportunity to publish a response. Then, if denied, take it to another outlet until someone runs with it. Then WaPo gets to defend its actions…and look like the fraud they are.

“When to Consult a Copyright Attorney vs. a Human Rights Attorney: Copyright Disputes: If you are facing a copyright infringement claim or have a dispute over the ownership or use of your work, you should consult with a copyright attorney.”

You could have grounds to sue the developers of chatgpt for defamation too. They made a piece of software which claims you did something horrendous that you did not. How amenable a judge would be to that suit, relevant precedent, etc an attorney would have to say

I think people are misunderstanding your screenshot to be something published on WaPo with your name in the byline, rather than something you fear will be published on WaPo in the future.

Defamation. There are putting a position you do NOT hold in your mouth. Spreading lies that affect the public perception of your values. Sue WaPo. They published falsehoods under you name.

Most likely an attorney who knows publicity rights. “Personality rights, sometimes referred to as the right of publicity, are rights for an individual to control the commercial use of their identity, such as NAME, image, likeness, or other unequivocal identifiers.”

You are going to need a lot of help. I would contact the ACLU and get started with rights you have to your own work to not be misrepresented. Go after ChatGPT. Honestly myself and tons of developers are losing work to them and they are giddy about people losing jobs now to use their shitty AI.

That's good context, but it could only happen if WAPO agreed to cough up all your work, and they did. Meanwhile NYT is suing to prevent it from happening to their reporters.

That's actually not at all true!! Very important to understand. IT will do this with ANYONE's (any public writer) name and a garbage "approximation" (not even remotely close) of style.

These large language models are notorious for training on publicly available data regardless of whether they have permission or not. Obviously I wouldn't put it past WaPo to be wilfully providing training data, but it can also just mean ChatGPT is stealing, which it is known to do.

I would look to sue ChatGPT. They have misrepresented your work and damaged your reputation. They should not be making their tool available for use until they can guarantee not to do such things to people's work.

That clarifies things GREATLY. If WaPo had published that? Then yes, sue the f*** out of Bezos. As it's on Chat GPT? I'd consult a lawyer as to who to sue. At the least, it's a poor impersonation which could damage your reputation.

This is the horror of it, I'm sorry it happened but it's also happening to every writer, artist and musician out there - this slop generator steals truth and creativity and regurgitates it to an idiot public. Not good!

MEMORY: Abusive, slaveholding labor thieves willing to kill their own families to continue to hold humans in bondage REALITY: Abusive, slaveholding labor thieves willing to kill their own families to continue to hold humans in bondage I'm not seeing the alleged disconnect.

Sue ChatGPT/OpenAI for defamation and theft of publicity. They are using your name to implicitly endorse a product, their chatbot. They are implicitly saying you would both-sides the civil war and thus wrecking your professional name.

True. They're not understanding it's not on the internet, it's not shared, it's just generated because they've asked it. THEY'ASKED FOR IT. AI IT"S NOT AN ARCHIVE or a website.

WaPo owns the words I wrote for them, and they have the right to create derivative works, like a movie, from those words, though iirc they had to give the reporter a cut of the deal. They do no the right to use my name OR TO CONFER THE USE OF MY NAME TO A THIRD PARTY.

That's an appropriation of your name. That is part of privacy/publicity law which is state law, not federal like copyright. Try lawyers who specialize in Intellectual Property law. Some who advertise that they handle "entertainment law" may also be familiar with the statutes & case law.

I am so so sorry. I loved your work at WaPo. I would be willing to sign a letter stating that I will not be using WaPo in my classroom or personal life because of their use of OpenAI. It’s theft and impersonation.

You could sue them for trademark infringement for tarnishing your name. I would sue under section 43B of the Lanahm Act, the false advertising prong. I wrote a law review article in 2006 about using the false advertising prong to enforce moral rights.

Yup. The unlicensed use of your name and reputation is an excellent angle to sue imo. Definitely consult with lawyers on this! Tbh any law firm currently suing Open Ai on copyright infringement and unlicensed use of reputation/name would be good as chances are they are well versed in this!

This is a more accurate (if boring) summary of my writing on Lee, with links, similar to derivative work or search engine result. But ChatGPT shouldn’t put my byline on smtg I didn’t write, EVEN IF IT IS ASKED TO! It won’t give me naked pics of your mom if I ask it to, it shouldn’t do this either.