A new ruling in Authors Guild v. OpenAI has major implications for copyright law, well beyond artificial intelligence. On October 27, 2025, Judge Sidney Stein of the Southern District of New York denied OpenAI%u2019s motion to dismiss claims that ChatGPT outputs infringed the rights of authors such as George R.R. Martin and David Baldacci. The opinion suggests that short summaries of popular works of fiction are very likely infringing (unless fair use comes to the rescue).
This is a fundamental assault on the idea-expression distinction as applied to works of fiction. It places thousands of Wikipedia entries in the copyright crosshairs and suggests that any kind of summary or analysis of a work of fiction is presumptively infringing.
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