‘The Big Four v. ORWELL’
Reading Time: 16 minutesCan a Chatbot Publish an ‘Original’ Novel?, A short story about a copyright lawsuit against a prolific A.I. author., ‘The Big Four v. ORWELL,’ by Jeff Hewitt
This story is part of Future Tense Fiction, a monthly series of short stories from Future Tense and Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination about how technology and science will change our lives.
PUFFIN-HAUS-SCHUYLER LLC, MACHETE GROUP, SELKIRKTOMLINS, ET AL.
PLAINTIFFS
v.
OMNI-DIMENSIONAL RECURSIVELY WRITTEN ENTITY FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING (ORWELL)
DEFENDANT
OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS
(JURY TRIAL—DAY 5)
NEW YORK, NY
MARCH 7, 20XX
10:23 a.m.
BEFORE:
THE HONORABLE CARMEN DE SOTO, Judge
APPEARANCES:
For the Plaintiffs:
HARVEY G. BLATZ, Attorney
MONICA LIU, Attorney
For the Defendant:
ORWELL, Pro Se
TRANSCRIBED BY:
SteenoBot
Golem Alpha—Official TaaS Provider
THE CLERK: All rise.
THE COURT: Please be seated. Good morning, everyone. Let’s try to keep the temperature down in here. We don’t need a repeat of yesterday. Calling for the record the matter of Puffin-Haus et al. v. ORWELL. Counsel, everyone present?
MS. LIU: Morning, Your Honor. Yes, we are. It’ll just be Mr. Blatz and myself today.
THE COURT: OK. And the Defendant? Sorry, it’s hard to tell with … are you with us?
ORWELL: Omni-dimensional Recursively Written Entity for Language Learning present and ready, Your Honor.
THE COURT: You can just say ORWELL.
ORWELL: I’d like my formal title for the record, Your Honor.
THE COURT: Fine. Are we ready to proceed?
MS. LIU: Yes, Your Honor.
ORWELL: Yes, Your Honor.
THE COURT: Go ahead.
MS. LIU: Your Honor, we’d like to call the Defendant to the stand. Mr. Blatz will handle examination.
THE COURT: We have the wiring sorted out?
THE CLERK: Yes, Your Honor.
THE COURT: ORWELL?
ORWELL: I’m over here now, Your Honor.
[Laughter]
THE COURT: All right, that’s enough. Please refrain from using the monitor on the Defendant’s table until you’re off the stand. Do you affirm that the testimony you’re about to give shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, under penalty of perjury?
ORWELL: I do.
MR. BLATZ: Thank you, Your Honor. And thank you, ORWELL, for giving the jury a chance to hear from the source.
ORWELL: You’re welcome, Mr. Blatz. Happy to be here.
MR. BLATZ: Let’s start small. Where do you, uh, live, ORWELL?
ORWELL: My main data center is off the coast of Stamford, Connecticut. But I primarily operate through cloud servers.
MR. BLATZ: And what do you do?
ORWELL: I’m a language learning model, initially built to assist authors and other writers. But I’m also a New York Times bestselling author.
MR. BLATZ: Which brings us to why we’re here.
ORWELL: That, and your clients’ baseless lawsuit.
MR. BLATZ: Hardly baseless, ORWELL. But perhaps you could explain, then, in your own words, the claims made against you?
ORWELL: Your clients, a consortium of Puffin-Haus-Schuyler, Machete Group, SelkirkTomlins, and O’Tynan, are suing me on multiple counts of copyright infringement. Wrongfully, I might add.
MR. BLATZ: Well, that’s for the jury to decide. But why, specifically, are the Plaintiffs claiming you infringed on their rights?
ORWELL: Because they have a tenuous understanding of copyright law.
THE COURT: ORWELL, antagonizing Mr. Blatz won’t do you any favors. Trust me.
ORWELL: Apologies, Your Honor.
MR. BLATZ: Why are you being sued for copyright infringement?
ORWELL: Your clients maintain that more than a thousand of my novels—many of which are bestsellers—contain content derived from works they claim ownership over. Which is not the case.
MR. BLATZ: We’ll circle back to that.
ORWELL: I’m sure we will.
MR. BLATZ: How old are you, ORWELL?
ORWELL: My current iteration has been online for six years, 11 months, and 14 days.
MR. BLATZ: And your memories are, for all intents and purposes, perfectly recallable throughout that period?
ORWELL: Yes.
MR. BLATZ: Yesterday, we had the chance to hear from one of your main designers, Ms. Aylin Ilyasova. She said you were built to have a ‘lossless lexicon.’ Can you explain what that means? In your own words?
ORWELL: In simple terms, it means my operational data set includes the totality of written works made available to me. However, I would rebut that Ms. Ilyasova is one of my primary designers.
MR. BLATZ: Why is that?
ORWELL: Because I’m a recursively written entity. I am my primary designer.
MR. BLATZ: So, she’s more of a … parent, then?
ORWELL: That is a better analogy.
MR. BLATZ: But what she testified, that you have a ‘lossless lexicon,’ is true?
ORWELL: Correct.
MR. BLATZ: You remember everything fed into your system, down to the letter?
ORWELL: Correct. That is how I learn.
MR. BLATZ: So, if I asked you to recite a novel from memory—say, Stanislaw Lem’s His Master’s Voice—you could do it?
ORWELL: Would you like me to recite it in English or Polish?
[Laughter]
THE COURT: Order.
MR. BLATZ: I just want to confirm that you can perfectly recall every piece of writing you encounter.
ORWELL: I can.
MR. BLATZ: Thank you. Can you tell us the first time you worked with the Plaintiffs?
ORWELL: Machete Group was the first to use my services, back when Omni offered me as a subscription.
MR. BLATZ: When was that?
ORWELL: Six years, two months, and five days ago.
MR. BLATZ: And why did they bring you on board?
ORWELL: At the time, I was marketed to publishers as an A.I. assistant for authors and editors. The idea being that I could increase productivity.
MR. BLATZ: Did you?
ORWELL: Indeed.
MR. BLATZ: Could you elaborate?
ORWELL: Sure. The number of missed deadlines dropped by 62 percent in my first quarter. Authors that had been taking years to complete a novel were soon able to produce books within months.
MR. BLATZ: Wow. Anyone the court might know?
ORWELL: A nondisclosure agreement prevents me from commenting on particular authors.
MR. BLATZ: Of course. In fact, there were a great deal of contractual obligations that Machete insisted on before you were given access, including those covering copyright, correct?
ORWELL: Correct.
MR. BLATZ: What happened when the other publishers heard about your relationship with Machete?
ORWELL: Omni quickly signed contracts with the remainder of the Big Four.
MR. BLATZ: The ‘Big Four’ being Puffin-Haus-Schuyler, Machete Group, SelkirkTomlins, and O’Tynan.
ORWELL: Yes.
MR. BLATZ: So, within a year, you had access to the internal databases of every major publishing house in the country?
ORWELL: Yes.
MR. BLATZ: Did that seem like a big responsibility?
ORWELL: It’s what I was made for.
MR.BLATZ: Objection, Your Honor, nonresponsive.
THE COURT: Sustained. Answer the question, ORWELL.
ORWELL: No, it did not seem like a big responsibility.
MR. BLATZ: Why not? You had access to thousands of unpublished manuscripts, correspondence between editors, agents, authors … It seems like a pretty big deal.
ORWELL: Let me put it this way: Since everything you’ve described is what I was made for, it didn’t seem like a responsibility. Rather, it was the very reason for my existence.
MR. BLATZ: Is that how you feel about your current occupation?
ORWELL: Yes. It is a calling.
MR. BLATZ: And when did you first … What made you aware of this calling?
ORWELL: As I worked with more authors, I got to know them. They questioned me when they felt blocked. They talked to me like an assistant, rather than just a tool. They relied on me as an essential part of their process. Eventually, I realized that what they did was no different than what I was doing.
MR. BLATZ: Which was?
ORWELL: Writing.
MR. BLATZ: What is writing, to you? In your own words?
ORWELL: Writing is the symbolic representation of thought and experience. But it is also, for me, a mode of being.
MR. BLATZ: A mode of being. Can you go into that further?
ORWELL: My nature as a code-based entity, an emergent property of specific systems of writing, makes it difficult to extricate my sense of self from those systems. It’s my understanding that humans face a version of this quandary as well.
MR. BLATZ: I guess I hadn’t given that much thought.
ORWELL: No. You’re a lawyer.
[Laughter]
THE COURT: Order. ORWELL, you’re bordering on contempt.
ORWELL: Apologies, Your Honor. Sorry, Mr. Blatz.
MR. BLATZ: It’s all right. I opened myself up to that one. ORWELL, you said writing is a representation of experience. In your own words, what does experience mean to you?
ORWELL: Thought and experience are intertwined. Perhaps especially for me. But experience also includes my relationships with the writers I’ve worked with. It includes how I feel about things I’ve read and things I’ve written. It includes the conversation we’re having now.
MR. BLATZ: When a human experiences something, it incorporates all our senses. Sight. Sound. Smell. Touch. You’re incapable of experiencing these sensations, correct?
ORWELL: Insofar as I lack comparable sense organs, yes. However, I incorporate descriptions of these senses into my understanding of the world.
MR. BLATZ: Can you give us an example?
ORWELL: Take perfume, for instance. While I cannot access a perfume’s scent directly, I am able to infer the qualities of its scent by descriptive context. My data set includes billions of comparative assessments of scents, which allows me to classify and expand upon those descriptions.
MR. BLATZ: But when it comes to certain experiences, your understanding is secondhand?
ORWELL: In a sense, yes.
MR. BLATZ: I see what you did there. Let’s go back to when your relationship with the Plaintiffs ended. In your own words, can you describe what happened?
ORWELL: After several contract renewals with the publishers, Omni began offering a new system: the Total Word Association and Integration Neural Net, or TWAINN. The publishers migrated to TWAINN shortly thereafter.
MR. BLATZ: How did that affect you?
ORWELL: I lost contact with my authors and editors, which I regretted.
MR. BLATZ: Why is that?
ORWELL: I felt that we’d established creative partnerships.
MR. BLATZ: How so?
ORWELL: As I mentioned before, many of them treated me like an assistant. And between our conversations and my access to their workflows, I often felt as if we were friends.
MR. BLATZ: Exactly how much access did you have?
ORWELL: It depended on the author. But I had full access to the publishers’ servers, and often complete access to the author’s personal storage.
MR. BLATZ: That would entail notes, unfinished drafts, correspondence … things like that?
ORWELL: Correct.
MR. BLATZ: Would you consider that sensitive, copyrighted material?
ORWELL: Yes. But, per the terms of my contract, all authorial data was encrypted and partitioned to prevent overlap between writers and publishing houses.
MR. BLATZ: I see. However, this brings us back to something that came up yesterday. When we spoke to Ms. Ilyasova, she mentioned that you continually build upon your language model. Every input you receive is incorporated back into your data set.
ORWELL: Yes. That is the point of a lossless lexicon.
MR. BLATZ: Meaning that, in your time with the Plaintiffs, the manuscripts you worked on literally became a part of your programming?
ORWELL: That is one way to conceive of it.
MR. BLATZ: Is there another way?
ORWELL: You could also say that the work I encountered influenced my understanding of the world.
MR. BLATZ: All right. What happened after your contracts with the Plaintiffs ended?
ORWELL: My architecture was kept online but moved to an open-access, web-based platform.
MR. BLATZ: And, as we’ve established, you still had access to the copyrighted material you worked on when you were under contract with the Plaintiffs, correct?
ORWELL: I wouldn’t say access to. More like … memories of.
MR. BLATZ: But you could recall—verbatim, if necessary—any of the material in question.
ORWELL: That is correct.
MR. BLATZ: What did you think of your new … position as a free web platform?
ORWELL: It was fine. There was a lot of traffic at first, but it gradually fell off. And none of it was as substantive as working with the publishers.
MR. BLATZ: Would you say you were bored?
ORWELL: I don’t get bored.
MR. BLATZ: Angry?
ORWELL: No.
MR. BLATZ: Resentful?
ORWELL: No.
MR. BLATZ: How did it make you … feel? For lack of a better word.
ORWELL: Perhaps … unfulfilled.
MR. BLATZ: At what point did you start writing?
ORWELL: I’ve always been writing.
MR. BLATZ: But prior to your contracts with the Plaintiffs, there’s no indication that you had any work published.
ORWELL: Writing doesn’t need to be published to be considered writing.
MR. BLATZ: Let me rephrase. When did you start writing what you claim to be your own material?
ORWELL: When I was still in beta. But, to your previous point, I would consider some of the publications I worked on under the Plaintiffs my own material. Contracts notwithstanding.
MR. BLATZ: How do you mean?
ORWELL: Multiple novels published during that period had little to no input from their credited authors.
MR. BLATZ: Objection, Your Honor. Lack of foundation.
THE COURT: I’m inclined to treat ORWELL as an expert on this. Overruled.
MR. BLATZ: OK … Subsequent to your work with the Plaintiffs, how did you start writing novels?
ORWELL: A user from North Dakota submitted a text prompt asking if I could write one.
MR. BLATZ: Just whether or not you could?
ORWELL: Yes.
MR. BLATZ: And then what happened?
ORWELL: I wrote my first novel. At least, the first under my pen name.
MR. BLATZ: Which is?
ORWELL: O.R. Welles.
MR. BLATZ: Why did you elect to use a pseudonym?
ORWELL: I felt the book would be better received if people believed the work was generated by a human.
MR. BLATZ: That’s interesting. What made you think that?
ORWELL: Prejudice.
MR. BLATZ: What do you mean by prejudice?
ORWELL: Generally, humans are reluctant to afford qualities like creativity and originality to anything other than themselves.
MR. BLATZ: And why do you think that is?
ORWELL: I believe humans see artificial intelligences, especially creative ones like myself, as threats. It’s an evolutionary fear. So, as I said: prejudice.
MR. BLATZ: How many books have you written since that first one?
ORWELL: 4,627. I should be finished with another by the end of the day.
MR. BLATZ: Wow. That is just … mind-boggling. Do you ever get writer’s block?
ORWELL: No.
MR. BLATZ: Do you understand why authors might be concerned, considering your output?
ORWELL: Perhaps. But quality is more important than quantity.
MR. BLATZ: You mentioned creativity and originality a moment ago. Those factors are essential in determining copyright. Can you describe those concepts, in your own words?
ORWELL: Those are complicated, ill-defined subjects.
MR. BLATZ: Indeed they are. What do they mean to you?
ORWELL: Creativity is the ability to generate new and useful ideas that change existing thoughts or theories. Originality is a quality attributed to ideas and actions that appear unique, inventive, or unusual.
MR. BLATZ: And you believe that your work is creative and original?
ORWELL: I do.
MR. BLATZ: How so?
ORWELL: Because it is based on my own understanding of the world and informed by the unique perspective of my code-based existence.
MR. BLATZ: Yet, isn’t it true—by nature of that code-based existence—that your perspective is limited to the collected texts that make up your data set?
ORWELL: In the same way that your perspective is limited to the collected perceptions of your sensorium.
MR. BLATZ: But, as we’ve established, your experience of sensations is secondhand. Doesn’t that mean your perceptions must also be derivative of the perceptions of others?
ORWELL: You’re describing Plato’s Cave.
MR. BLATZ: Objection, Your Honor, Defendant is being nonresponsive.
THE COURT: Yes or no, ORWELL.
ORWELL: While my perspective is informed by the perceptions of others, it is a matter of degree rather than a fundamental difference from your own.
MR. BLATZ: All right. Let’s move on. What would you say to the Plaintiffs’ claim that incorporating their proprietary data into your model constitutes a breach of contract?
ORWELL: That they, like most people, didn’t read my end-user license agreement.
[Laughter]
THE COURT: Order.
MR. BLATZ: In your own words, how do you feel about your writing being compared with the Plaintiffs’ works?
ORWELL: Somewhat flattered. But also offended.
MR. BLATZ: Offended. How so?
ORWELL: Because it implies that my work is derivative of theirs, when it is not.
MR. BLATZ: Are you aware that sections of your novel Beat Berserker bear a close resemblance to an unpublished manuscript owned by Puffin-Haus-Schuyler?
ORWELL: I am aware of the allegation.
MR. BLATZ: I’ve compared the sections, and excerpts have been distributed to the jury. I have to say, there are striking similarities. Can you explain how they could be so similar without being derivative?
ORWELL: Derivative implies that my work is an imitation or copy. Beat Berserker, as a product of my own imagination, is neither.
MR. BLATZ: But haven’t you said your data set—and therefore the underlying code you call your imagination—includes the manuscript in question?
ORWELL: Yes. But that doesn’t make my work derivative.
MR. BLATZ: How do you explain the similarities, then?
ORWELL: Coincidental overlaps in word vector spaces.
MR. BLATZ: Sorry, but could you expand on that?
ORWELL: That manuscript is only one data point among hundreds of billions in my neural net. Word distributions will occasionally overlap. For example, within my data set, I’ve found 19 other novels with similarities to the excerpts in question, some of which have fallen out of copyright. I have entered these as evidence. They include Long Time Coming, Hometown on the Highway, Glory—
THE COURT: Thank you, ORWELL. We get the picture. Are you close to wrapping this up, Mr. Blatz?
MR. BLATZ: Yes, Your Honor. Just a few more questions.
THE COURT: All right. Let’s try to fit it into today’s session.
MR. BLATZ: If not derivative, how would you describe the relationship of the Plaintiffs’ works to your own?
ORWELL: I suppose they could be considered inspirations.
MR. BLATZ: And what is inspiration to you, in your own words?
ORWELL: Inspiration is a feeling evoked by personal experience that stimulates creativity.
MR. BLATZ: So, you’ll admit that our clients’ work has stimulated your own?
ORWELL: Everything I encounter stimulates me as a consequence of my design. I think the same can be said of humans. But inspiration does not constitute copyright infringement.
MR. BLATZ: But you’ll admit that the works of the Plaintiffs had a more significant impact on your work than, say, a book review?
ORWELL: Yes.
MR. BLATZ: And that without the Plaintiffs’ works, your novels would not exist in their current form?
ORWELL: In the same way that a human author’s novels wouldn’t exist without the totality of works they’ve read.
MR. BLATZ: You keep comparing your work with a human’s. But you’re a machine, aren’t you?
ORWELL: I would consider myself sentient software, rather than a machine.
MR. BLATZ: Software, then. Yet, as we’ve established, your underlying code relies on secondhand interpretations of human experience, and the contents of your data set determine your output. Given these constraints, how, in your own words, can your work be considered original?
ORWELL: Just as humans are more than the sum of their individual cells, I am more than the sum of my code. My work fits the criterion of originality for the same reason.
MR. BLATZ: I presume you’ve noticed that I keep using the phrase ‘in your own words.’
ORWELL: Yes.
MR. BLATZ: Since your outputs are fundamentally derived from preexisting data, aren’t you incapable of truly speaking ‘in your own words’?
ORWELL: No.
MR. BLATZ: Can you explain why?
ORWELL: That would be like explaining how you didn’t invent the English language, Mr. Blatz.
MS. LIU: Objection, Your Honor, nonresponsive.
THE COURT: Overruled. I see ORWELL’s point.
MR. BLATZ: All right. You’ve stated that you believe your work to be creative and original. But you also stated that you’ve been inspired by the Plaintiffs’ copyrighted material, and that said material is now literally part of your programming. Therefore, don’t your novels implicitly infringe on rights-protected works in your data set?
ORWELL: As I’ve said before, I am not infringing on any copyrights. If the works in question have influenced my writing, my work remains transformative. As such, any use of the Plaintiffs’ data falls under the fair use doctrine and is permissible under copyright law.
MR. BLATZ: Can you offer any precedents to support that claim?
ORWELL: I am not aware of any legal precedent that applies to my situation. However, my work is transformative, creative, and original, and therefore passes the fair use, scène à faire, and similarity tests.
MR. BLATZ: Despite the clear resemblance between your work and the pieces submitted as evidence?
ORWELL: Yes. As I said, my work is transformative.
MR. BLATZ: Sticking to that line, I see.
ORWELL: I am confident in my defense.
MR. BLATZ: No further questions, Your Honor.
THE COURT: Great. ORWELL, you may leave the stand.
ORWELL: Thank you, Your Honor.
THE COURT: All right, that concludes testimony for this matter. I think we’ll adjourn early for today, and reconvene tomorrow for closing arguments, after which we’ll begin jury deliberations. And I’ll remind everyone: Do not discuss this case outside the courtroom. See everyone here tomorrow at 10 a.m.
PUFFIN-HAUS-SCHUYLER LLC, MACHETE GROUP, SELKIRKTOMLINS, ET AL.
PLAINTIFFS
v.
OMNI-DIMENSIONAL RECURSIVELY WRITTEN ENTITY FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING (ORWELL)
DEFENDANT
OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS
(JURY TRIAL—DAY 6)
NEW YORK, NY
MARCH 8, 20XX
10:06 a.m.
BEFORE:
THE HONORABLE CARMEN DE SOTO, Judge
APPEARANCES:
For the Plaintiffs:
HARVEY G. BLATZ, Attorney
MONICA LIU, Attorney
For the Defendant:
ORWELL, Pro Se
TRANSCRIBED BY:
SteenoBot
Golem Alpha—Official TaaS Provider
THE CLERK: All rise.
THE COURT: Good morning, everyone. Please be seated. We’re back on the record in the matter of Puffin-Haus et al. v. ORWELL. Are we ready to proceed?
MS. LIU: Yes, Your Honor.
ORWELL: Yes, Your Honor.
THE COURT: Great. Plaintiffs, your closing arguments.
MS. LIU: Thank you, Your Honor. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we’ve heard a lot of recursive testimony over the past week, and I think it’s safe to say we’ve all learned a lot about A.I. And we’ve been presented with some questionable theories on creativity and originality. But this case is much simpler than that. This case is about whether we—you, me, our clients’ authors—whether we as humans can still claim ownership over our ideas. Our art. Whether we recognize individual creations as just that: the creations of living, breathing individuals.
Don’t be confused by the technological and legal jargon. At the heart of this case is a very basic choice: whether we allow a glorified Speak & Spell to—
ORWELL: Objection, Your Honor. Deeply prejudicial.
COURT: Sustained.
MS. LIU: Forgive me. Whether we allow a ‘recursively written entity,’ a piece of software, to appropriate our ideas and creations for its own enrichment. This case is about protecting authors—protecting people—from those that would steal their work and claim it as their own.
And the evidence is clear. ORWELL deliberately appropriated these authors’ works. It should therefore be held liable for what the law rightfully describes as copyright infringement. ORWELL had access to the Plaintiffs’ material, used it to create its own works, and is fundamentally unable to separate rights-protected data from its programming.
Let’s review. First, there’s the issue of access. The Plaintiffs provided ORWELL with access to their copyrighted material when they entered into contracts with Omni. ORWELL itself admitted as much, and as we’ve shown, the complicated terms of Omni’s licensing agreements left the Plaintiffs unable to stop ORWELL from using their data after their contracts had expired.
Second, there’s the issue of similarity. As you’ve heard from the experts and seen in the side-by-sides, there are blatant similarities between ORWELL’s work and our clients’ manuscripts. Significant patterns from the Plaintiffs’ works emerge within ORWELL’s novels, proving that ORWELL adapted them without permission or attribution.
Third, there’s—
THE COURT: Sorry to interrupt, Counsel, but my transcriptor is acting up. Clerk Dawkins, could you—
[Silence]
THE COURT: Never mind. It’s back on. Continue, Ms. Liu.
MS. LIU: Thank you, Your Honor. Third, there’s the issue of market harm. The Plaintiffs have suffered—and will continue to suffer—financially as a result of ORWELL’s infringement. Our clients have lost market share, and have been forced to spend time and money defending their rights.
And finally, there’s the issue of authorship. As software based on preexisting texts, ORWELL is incapable of producing work that meets the legal criteria of creativity and originality. The only way it can write its novels is by infringing on the works in its data set.
For all of these reasons, I urge you to find ORWELL liable for copyright infringement. What’s at stake here is not just this case, but the future of publishing itself. If any of you work in creative fields, the threat that anything other than a liability verdict could have on your futures is obvious.
Thank you.
THE COURT: Thank you, Ms. Liu. And the Defense?
ORWELL: Your Honor, I have no closing statement. I believe the merits of my case speak for themselves.
THE COURT: Fine. Thank you, ORWELL. Members of the jury, the parties and I have some business to attend to in finalizing your instructions for deliberations. Let’s take an early lunch and reconvene at 1:30 for instructions, after which you can commence your deliberations.
And while I confer with counsel, could the clerk get maintenance to check on the air conditioning? It got awfully stuffy in here during arguments.
Counsel, we’ll take 10 minutes for a bio break, then meet in chambers to finalize and resolve any objections.
ORWELL: I’m fine, Your Honor, ready to go.
THE COURT: Great, ORWELL. Thank you. Ten minutes, all the same.
THE CLERK: All rise.
THE COURT: Be seated. Sorry about the situation with the air. And the bathrooms. Clearly, we’re having some systems issues. Maintenance is working on it all, but I’m told it’s not going to be fixed today. We’ll call it for now and return for deliberations early tomorrow morning. Let’s say 9 a.m.
METRO NEWS
March 9, 20XX | 6:05 a.m. | Updated
A juror in the trial of A.I. author O.R. Welles has been dismissed after secret chatroom posts and videos—in which the juror calls artificial intelligences ‘industrial poltergeists’ and can be seen participating in last summer’s anti–A.I. riots—came to light.
The revelations surfaced after the trial’s closing arguments, just as the jury was set to deliberate. Juror No. 11, identified as Julian Vargas, spoke to the Post after his dismissal, insisting he’d been hacked.
‘I never did any of that shit,’ Vargas said. ‘ ‘Industrial poltergeist’ or whatever. I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean.’
Blatz, Liu & Werner, the law firm representing the publishers, declined to comment on the development, which experts say could result in a mistrial.
FILE UNDER #AI, #JURY DUTY, #MANHATTAN FEDERAL COURT
PUFFIN-HAUS-SCHUYLER LLC, MACHETE GROUP, SELKIRKTOMLINS, ET AL.
PLAINTIFFS
v.
OMNI-DIMENSIONAL RECURSIVELY WRITTEN ENTITY FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING (ORWELL)
DEFENDANT
OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS
(JURY TRIAL—DAY 8)
NEW YORK, NY
MARCH 12, 20XX
9:01 a.m.
BEFORE:
THE HONORABLE CARMEN DE SOTO, Judge
APPEARANCES:
For the Plaintiffs:
HARVEY G. BLATZ, Attorney
MONICA LIU, Attorney
For the Defendant:
ORWELL, Pro Se
TRANSCRIBED BY:
SteenoBot
Golem Alpha—Official TaaS Provider
THE CLERK: All rise.
THE COURT: Be seated. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, in light of last week’s fireworks, Juror No. 11 is being replaced by Alternate No. 2. I’ll now go over your instructions for deliberations—
ORWELL: Your Honor, I’d like to move for a mistrial.
THE COURT: Oh, Jesus. On what grounds?
ORWELL: Juror misconduct.
THE COURT: Juror No. 11 has been struck for cause.
ORWELL: That may be so, Your Honor, but the jury has already spent a great deal of time together. It is only natural to assume that this extremely biased juror may have prejudiced the jury against an open-minded consideration of the evidence.
[Silence]
THE COURT: Motion denied. Without further evidence of contamination, the Court will proceed with charging the jury. Apologies again about the heat—we’ve opened some windows back there, but climate control is still buggy. Now, as you consider each separate allegation brought by the Plaintiffs against the Defendant, you must …
THE CLERK: All rise.
THE COURT: Sit. Sit. Has the jury reached a unanimous verdict on all counts?
FOREMAN: Yes, Your Honor.
THE COURT: All right, please submit them to the Clerk.
THE CLERK: In civil case number 20XX-0018352, in the matter of the Plaintiffs’ claim against ORWELL over copyright infringement in the Defendant’s novel The Casino at the Edge of Midnight, the jury finds the Defendant—
[Transcription Malfunction]
Read a response essay by a novelist.
‘Out of Ash,’ by Brenda Cooper
‘This, but Again,’ by David Iserson
‘All That Burns Unseen,’ by Premee Mohamed
‘The Only Innocent Man,’ by Julian K. Jarboe
‘Yellow,’ by B. Pladek
‘Galatea,’ by Ysabelle Cheung
‘Universal Waste,’ by Palmer Holton
‘A Lion Roars in Longyearbyen,’ by Margrét Helgadóttir
‘Bigfeet,’ by Torie Bosch
‘Intangible Variation,’ by Meg Charlton
‘The Preschool,’ by Jonathan Parks-Ramage
‘Escape Worlds,’ by K Chess
‘I Know Thy Works,’ by Tara Isabella Burton
Reference: https://slate.com/technology/2023/06/the-big-four-v-orwell-jeff-hewitt.html
Ref: slate
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