Japanese Publishers Warn OpenAI Over Sora 2 Copyright Use

A coalition of Japanese anime and manga publishers issued a joint statement warning against potential copyright infringement by OpenAI's Sora 2 video generator, according to Nikkei Asia. The group said they would not tolerate unauthorized use of their works and demanded transparency and compensation from the company. Sora 2 uses an opt-out system, requiring copyright holders to explicitly refuse permission for their content to be used.

The warning comes as OpenAI faces ongoing legal scrutiny in other markets. In the United States, a federal judge in New York recently allowed authors’ copyright infringement claims against the company to proceed. The case involves AI-generated summaries and derivative outlines of George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” novels and other works, which plaintiffs argue are substantially similar to their copyrighted material.

The Authors Guild, along with writers including Martin, John Grisham, and Jodi Picoult, is leading the class action against OpenAI and its largest investor, Microsoft, over the use of copyrighted texts to train the company’s large language models.