ChatGPT Refuses Author Style Imitation: AI & Copyright

ChatGPT is now refusing requests to imitate the writing style of famous authors like Stephen King. Instead, the chatbot offers to create original text with common genre features. This change follows reports from Ars Technica and analysis by No Latency. OpenAI faces lawsuits from authors alleging copyright infringement in model training. While US law protects expression, not abstract style, creating "substantially similar" texts could lead to unfair competition charges. A law professor notes that AI allows for unprecedented and inexpensive imitation of personal styles. However, the chatbot's application of these rules is selective. While it refused to imitate Stephen King and Les Poderviansky, it generated a Tom Clancy-style essay about Ukrainian drones. Other AI models show varied approaches; Google's Gemini still copies styles, while Perplexity AI rejects such requests. Anthropic's Claude and Microsoft's Copilot perform these tasks but add warnings. OpenAI's DALL-E 3 image generator already restricts creating art in the style of living artists. This matters because it highlights the ongoing legal and ethical debate around AI and intellectual property.