Comedian and author Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta, alleging that the companies' artificial intelligence language models were trained on copyrighted materials from her books without her knowledge or consent.

The lawsuits, filed in a San Francisco federal court on Friday, seek class action status on behalf of Silverman and other authors whose work may have been used to train the AI models.

Silverman is joined in the lawsuits by fellow authors Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey. The three authors allege that OpenAI's ChatGPT and Meta's LLaMA language models were trained on text from their books, including Silverman's memoir "The Bedwetter."

The lawsuits claim that the companies violated the authors' copyrights by using their work without permission. The authors are seeking damages and an injunction preventing the companies from continuing to use their work to train their AI models.

OpenAI and Meta have not yet responded to the lawsuits.

The lawsuits come at a time when the use of artificial intelligence is raising new copyright questions. As AI models become more sophisticated, they are able to generate text, images, and other creative content that is indistinguishable from human-created work.

This raises the question of whether copyright law should protect AI-generated content. Some experts argue that AI-generated content should be protected by copyright, while others argue that it should not.

The outcome of the lawsuits against OpenAI and Meta could help to clarify the legal status of AI-generated content and the rights of authors whose work is used to train AI models.

Here are some additional details from the lawsuits:

• The lawsuits allege that OpenAI and Meta scraped illegal online "shadow libraries" that contain the texts of thousands of books.
• The lawsuits say that some of the text from these shadow libraries was used to train the ChatGPT and LLaMA language models.
• The lawsuits seek damages for the authors, as well as an injunction preventing the companies from continuing to use their work to train their AI models.

The lawsuits are still in their early stages, and it is not yet clear how they will be resolved. However, they could have a significant impact on the future of copyright law and the rights of authors.