Two 80-something journalists tried ChatGPT. Then, they sued to protect the 'written word'

abcnews.go.com:

When two octogenarian buddies named Nick discovered that ChatGPT might be stealing and repurposing a lifetime of their work, they tapped a son-in-law to sue the companies behind the artificial intelligence chatbot

GRAFTON, Mass. — When two octogenarian buddies named Nick discovered that ChatGPT might be stealing and repurposing a lifetime of their work, they tapped a son-in-law to sue the companies behind the artificial intelligence chatbot.

Veteran journalists Nicholas Gage, 84, and Nicholas Basbanes, 81, who live near each other in the same Massachusetts town, each devoted decades to reporting, writing and book authorship.

Gage poured his tragic family story and search for the truth about his mother's death into a bestselling memoir that led John Malkovich to play him in the 1985 film “Eleni.” Basbanes transitioned his skills as a daily newspaper reporter into writing widely-read books about literary culture.

Basbanes was the first of the duo to try fiddling with AI chatbots, finding them impressive but prone to falsehoods and lack of attribution. The friends commiserated and filed their lawsuit earlier this year, seeking to represent a class of writers whose copyrighted work they allege “has been systematically pilfered by” OpenAI and its business partner Microsoft.

“It's highway robbery,” Gage said in an interview in his office next to the 18th-century farmhouse where he lives in central Massachusetts.

“It is,” added Basbanes, as the two men perused Gage's book-filled shelves. “We worked too hard on these tomes.”

Now their lawsuit is subsumed into a broader case seeking class-action status led by household names like John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and “Game of Thrones” novelist George R. R. Martin; and proceeding