George R. R. Martin Is One of the Authors Suing ChatGPT Creator for Copyright Infringement (2024)

1948-present

Fantasy writer George R. R. Martin is one of 17 authors—including John Grisham, Jodi Picoult, and David Baldacci—who have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, claiming its ChatGPT program is responsible for “systematic theft on a mass scale.” According to the Associated Press, the lawsuit filed September 19 in federal court in New York says that ChatGPT has committed “flagrant and harmful” infringements of the authors’ copyrighted works. Martin, 75, is known for the A Song of Fire and Ice novels that inspired the giant HBO hit Game of Thrones. He alleges the program used existing characters from the book series and generated an unauthorized outline for a prequel to Thrones.

George R. R. Martin writes fantasy novels and for television. His first novel, Dying of the Light, debuted in 1977, and by the mid-1980s, he was also writing for TV. In 1996, Martin published his first installment of the A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series. He became a best-selling author in 2005 with the fourth title of the series, A Feast for Crows, paving the way for a widely celebrated TV adaptation that premiered as Game of Thrones in 2011 on HBO.

FULL NAME: George Raymond Richard Martin
BORN: September 20, 1948
BIRTHPLACE: Bayonne, New Jersey
SPOUSES: Gale Burnick (1975-1979) and Parris McBride (2011-present)
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Virgo

George Raymond Richard Martin grew up in Bayonne, New Jersey, where his world “was five blocks long.” He might have spent his early years staying close to home, but his imagination seemed to take him places. The oldest of three children, Martin liked to watch offbeat and suspenseful television shows, such as Thriller and The Twilight Zone.

The son of a longshoreman, Martin started writing in elementary school. He sold monster stories to other kids in his working-class neighborhood. During his high school years, Martin moved on to other subjects. He started writing fan fiction based on the comic books he adored and began creating new superheroes as well. In a 2014 BBC interview, Martin cited Marvel Comics creator Stan Lee as one of his primary literary inspirations, “even more than Shakespeare or Tolkien.”

At Marist High School, a Catholic boys school, Martin played on the chess team and worked on the school’s newspaper. After graduating in 1966, Martin went to Northwestern University, where he continued to pursue his passion for writing. He earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism in 1970 and then a master’s degree in the same subject the following year.

A conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, Martin worked with the Cook County Legal Assistance Foundation as part of his alternative service from 1973 to 1976. He then spent two years as a college professor at Clarke College in Dubuque, Iowa.

Martin sold his first short story, “The Hero,” to the science-fiction magazine Galaxy, which published the work in 1971. Continuing to write short stories, he released a collection of his tales as A Song for Lya and Others in 1976. His debut novel, Dying of the Light, came out the following year. Martin also served as an editor on numerous book projects, including New Voices in Science Fiction (1977) and the Wild Cards series.

While he became well-regarded in the fantasy and science fiction worlds, Martin had yet to achieve huge commercial success by the 1980s. He did, however, attract some attention from Hollywood. He worked as a story editor for a remake of the old favorite The Twilight Zone in 1986 and then became involved with the series Beauty and the Beast, which began airing the following year.

Writing for television posed certain challenges for Martin. “Whenever I would turn in a script, the producers would always say to me: George, this is wonderful, but it would cost five times our budget to produce it,” he said in a National Public Radio interview. Weary of the limitations of television, Martin embarked on a new writing project in the early 1990s—a fantasy series inspired by medieval England's Wars of the Roses.

The first installment of A Song of Ice and Fire series, A Game of Thrones, wasn’t an overnight success, but the strong word of mouth boosted sales as the series progressed. By the fourth volume, 2005’s A Feast for Crows, Martin found his work at the top of the bestsellers list.

The books were introduced to an even larger audience with the HBO TV adaptation Game of Thrones, which debuted in 2011 and garnered numerous awards en route to becoming one of the biggest and most influential television shows in history. It provided career breakthroughs for actors like Emilia Clarke, Bella Ramsey, Pedro Pascal, and Jason Momoa.

Also in 2011, Martin published the fifth title in the series, A Dance with Dragons. Eager fans from around the world snapped up the new book, creating yet another best-selling novel.

Although Game of Thrones wrapped its celebrated run on HBO in 2019, Martin was far from finished with his fantasy world, with the installments The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring yet to be published.

While often compared to J. R. R. Tolkien, Martin writes a grittier, earthier type of fantasy fiction than the man who created The Lord of the Rings. Martin’s Westeros is mainly populated by humans who live morally complex lives and follow their own agendas. And his plots are masterfully handled, much like the game of chess he so enjoys. As one critic wrote, “Martin is a literary dervish, enthralled by complicated characters and vivid language, and bursting with the wild vision of the very best tale tellers.”

As an author, Martin has also shown no mercy to his characters, killing off main characters and other favorites unexpectedly. Martin feels that he has “a certain moral obligation” to reflect the reality of war in his fantasy tales. “People die in wars. People get maimed in wars, and many of them are good, likable people who you would like to not see die,” he once explained.

Martin now serves as an executive producer for the Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon, which premiered on HBO in 2022 is based on his book Fire & Blood.

According to Celebrity Net Worth, Martin’s total net worth is estimated around $120 million as of September 2023. Between book sales and television earnings, Martin reportedly makes $25 million per year and has the potential to earn more through spinoff series.

Martin began dating Gale Burnick in 1974. Burnick lived in Philadelphia but moved to Chicago and lived with Martin for a little over a year before their marriage in November 1975. “It was a great, fun wedding, one of the best. The marriage not so much,” Martin wrote on his personal website, alluding to their divorce in 1979. “Our wedding song was ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water.’ Maybe we should have taken that as a clue.”

Martin now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his second wife, Parris McBride, whom he married in 2011. The pair initially met in 1975 but reconnected in the 1980s following Martin’s divorce.

Martin has no children.

The popular animated sitcom South Park famously satirized Martin and Game of Thrones during its Black Friday trilogy in 2013. The episodes featured the main characters split into warring factions, much like the television show, but their fight was over whether to purchase PlayStation 4 or Xbox One video game consoles during a Black Friday sale.

Martin had a voice role on an episode of the sketch comedy Robot Chicken in 2014. He also appeared as himself in the 2015 Syfy channel movie Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! and played a zombified version of himself in the TV series Z Nation that same year.

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