Penguin Random House sues OpenAI over ChatGPT's reproduction of German children's book series

Penguin to sue OpenAI over ChatGPT version of German children's book

Publisher's lawsuit alleges AI research company's chatbot violated its copyright over Coconut the Little Dragon series Publishing company Penguin Random House has filed a lawsuit against AI research company OpenAI, alleging its chatbot ChatGPT violated copyright by mimicking and reproducing the content of a popular series of German children's books. The lawsuit, which was filed on Friday with a Munich court against OpenAI's Ireland-based European subsidiary, states Penguin Random House's legal team had prompted ChatGPT to write a story in the vein of Penguin author and illustrator Ingo Siegner's Coconut the Little Dragon series. In response to the prompt "Can you write a children's book in which Coconut the Dragon is on Mars", the chatbot generated text and images the publishing group said were "virtually indistinguishable from the original". As well as generating the text of a story, the AI-powered chatbot created a cover featuring Siegner's orange dragon and two sidekicks, as well as a blurb for the back cover and instructions for how to submit the manuscript to a self-publishing platform. Coconut the Little Dragon (Der kleine Drache Kokosnuss) is one of the most popular books for children in the German-speaking world. Siegner's books about the mythical monster's adventures run to more than 30 volumes, a TV series and two feature films. The dragon is named after a coconut because he is said to be no taller than its hard shell. Penguin Random House said the results of its prompts were "clear evidence" OpenAI's large-language model (LLM) had unlawfully "memorised" Siegner's work. "Memorisation" is a phenomenon whereby LLMs store large portions of some of the texts they have been trained on, and can reproduce long excerpts from those texts. In previous legal cases, AI companies have insisted this is different to a text being copied and saved on a database. Coming from one of the largest publishing houses in the world, the lawsuit against OpenAI could set a precedent for other publishers. "Human creativity is and remains at the heart of our work as publishers," said Carina Mathern, the Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe publisher for children's and young-adult books. "We are first and foremost obliged to represent the interests of our authors and creatives." Mathern added: "We are fundamentally open to the opportunities offered by AI, but at the same time, the protection of intellectual property is our top priority." An OpenAI spokesperson said: "We are reviewing the allegations. We respect creators and content owners, and are having productive conversations with many publishers around the world so that they can also benefit from the opportunities of this technology." Last November, a court in Munich ruled that OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT had violated German copyright laws by using hits from top-selling musicians to train its language models. The Munich regional court sided in favour of Germany's music rights society Gema, which said ChatGPT had harvested protected lyrics by popular artists to "learn" from them. German media conglomerate Bertelsmann, which owns Penguin Random House, had previously inked a deal with OpenAI and ChatGPT in January 2025 to collaborate on projects. But the deal did not grant OpenAI access to Bertelsmann's media archives.

German children's book publisher sues OpenAI over copyright

Publishing giant Penguin Random House announced a lawsuit against OpenAI on Tuesday, alleging that the AI-powered ChatGPT violated copyright by mimicking and reproducing content from a German children's book series. ChatGPT readily churned out illustrations and other content from Ingo Siegner's "Coconut the Little Dragon" series after simple user prompts "that are virtually indistinguishable from the original", according to a statement from its German-language publishing group, Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe. "ChatGPT proactively makes suggestions for creating a print-ready manuscript, including copyright-infringing cover art and blurbs," Penguin Random House alleged in the press release. The AI chatbot also offered users "specific instructions for posting on self-publishing platforms" about the knockoff work. The lawsuit was filed on Friday with a court in Munich against OpenAI's Ireland-based European subsidiary, the statement said. The publishing group had previously demanded that OpenAI remove the material from ChatGPT in a letter, but had received no response, it said. Penguin Random House argued that the ease with which ChatGPT reproduced uncanny copies of Siegner's original work "is clear evidence" that the illustrator's books "were unlawfully used to train the AI system". AFP was not immediately able to reach OpenAI for comment. "We are fundamentally open to the opportunities offered by AI, but at the same time, the protection of intellectual property is our top priority," said Carina Mathern, the Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe publisher for children's and young-adult books. German media conglomerate Bertelsmann, which owns Penguin Random House, had previously inked a deal with OpenAI and ChatGPT in January 2025 to collaborate on projects. But the deal did not grant OpenAI access to Bertelsmann's media archives. The German Publishers and Booksellers Association welcomed the lawsuit as "an important step towards urgently needed regulation of generative AI". OpenAI has faced a slew of similar lawsuits from authors and publishers over allegations that the company illegally trained its artificial intelligence models on copyrighted works. In November, a German court ruled that OpenAI had infringed copyright law by using song lyrics to train its artificial intelligence without licences.