Alec Radford, the guy who helped birth OpenAI’s GPT tech, is in hot water. A court filing has confirmed he’s been officially subpoenaed in a copyright showdown that’s shaking the tech world, and not in a good way. The legal mess, filed in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California, saw Radford served on February 25.

For those not in the know, Radford was a big deal at OpenAI, churning out groundbreaking research before he cashed in his chips for a fresh start in independent research last year. He’s the brains behind some of the key components of OpenAI’s generative pre-trained transformers, or as we like to call them, the magic behind our favorite chatbot, ChatGPT.

This copyright case isn’t just any legal squabble; it involves authors who are saying OpenAI flat-out swiped their work to train its models. The plaintiffs? Oh, just a few folks you might have heard of, Paul Tremblay, the horror writer; Sarah Silverman, the comedian; and Michael Chabon, the Pulitzer Prize winner. They’re claiming that OpenAI didn’t just borrow a cup of sugar but rather took the whole recipe, using their work to inform ChatGPT without so much as a nod of recognition.

Last year, the court dismissed a couple of claims, but they’re still all systems go on the direct infringement issue. OpenAI’s argument? They maintain their actions fall under the umbrella of fair use. You know, that broad legal gray area that everyone loves to interpret differently.

But Radford isn’t the only ex-OpenAI bigwig getting dragged into this mess. There are more subpoenas flying around than at a lawyer’s convention, aiming at former employees like Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann. They’ve opted to resist, claiming that the legal process is a burden on their lives, because who wouldn’t want to sit and answer questions for hours about their previous jobs in tech?

A U.S. magistrate judge has since ruled that Amodei needs to step up and spill the beans on his work. It’s all starting to feel like a high-stakes reality show, where the creators of AI are now facing the very human consequences of their creations.

Keep your eyes peeled, folks. This isn’t just about a chatbot; it’s about who gets to own the narrative, and the profits, that come with it.