Cases › copyright or IP violation › LR-2026-0321
ChatGPT-written Game of Thrones fanfic prompts George R.R. Martin lawsuit
Preliminary Why: Publisher not yet named · subject to change
Developing: a major or severe case captured in the last 72 hours. Later changes are logged on the corrections page.
Status: no action reported
No source states: loss or records, agent tool, could do, deployer, industry.
Severity major: test met: many third parties, since the sentence names six other authors whose claims are consolidated with Martin's, which is a count of two or more affected parties.
A ChatGPT system developed by OpenAI produced outlines of sequels to Game of Thrones, according to a lawsuit by George R.R. Martin and other authors alleging copyright infringement. The complaint alleges OpenAI used their works to train its large language models, generated infringing outputs, and torrented books from illegal shadow libraries. In an October 27, 2025 ruling, U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein denied OpenAI's argument that the outputs were transformative, finding them substantially similar to the plaintiffs' works. The judge also allowed the piracy claim to proceed. The decision did not address fair use. Plaintiffs had earlier secured internal Slack messages in which OpenAI discussed deleting datasets of pirated books.
What happened
What was done
No source states an action or fix.
Risks
Primary7 incidents
Read from the sources; not yet reviewed by a person.
Controls
Not yet read for controls. Controls that mitigate the primary risk:
ModelCopyright safeguards · Marking machine-made output
ApplicationSimilar incidents
Evidence
No source states: what it reached or did, when it happened, when it was found, how many records were exposed, the direct loss, a count of the other parties affected, any court case, the cause, what set it off, what was done.
Show the full account: 4 items from the primary sources
What happened, in order
- 2025-10 A New York federal judge denied OpenAI's request to dismiss the copyright accusations over Game of Thrones sequel outlines.
- 2025-10-27 Judge Sidney Stein denied OpenAI's claim that the outputs were transformative.
Not dated in the sources:
- Plaintiffs secured internal Slack messages a few weeks before the ruling.
- The judge allowed the piracy charge against OpenAI to proceed.
Show every field, with its source and grade
The AI system
What happened
Impact
Notes on gaps
No remediation is reported. Other cases and events in the article (Anthropic, Meta, news organisations, Ross Intelligence, Character.AI) were excluded as not part of this incident.
LR-2026-0321 · version 1 · published 2026-11-01 after automatic checks; not yet checked field by field by a person · JSON