Sutskever, who played a pivotal role in the controversial firing of CEO Sam Altman in late 2023, has since left OpenAI to pursue a competing AI venture.

The lawsuit claims that OpenAI violated copyright laws by utilizing millions of books without permission, raising significant legal challenges for the company.

OpenAI is currently embroiled in a high-profile copyright lawsuit initiated by notable authors, including George R. R. Martin and Jonathan Franzen, who allege that the company unlawfully used their works to train AI models.

A contentious aspect of the case involves OpenAI's objection to including six current and former employees as 'custodians'—individuals believed to have relevant evidence.

The Author's Guild is urging the judge to compel OpenAI to include these six employees in the discovery process, emphasizing the importance of their documents.

The disputed custodians include co-founder Ilya Sutskever, pretraining data lead Qiming Yuan, and former science communicator Andrew Mayne, among others.

Lawyers for the Author's Guild argue that Sutskever possesses documents crucial to the case, yet OpenAI has not publicly justified its opposition to including him.

OpenAI has requested the complete redaction of six exhibits attached to the Author's Guild's letter, citing proprietary source code and sensitive internal discussions.

This legal battle underscores the competitive and secretive nature of the AI industry, as well as the ethical implications surrounding the use of creative works in AI development.

The outcome of this lawsuit could set a significant precedent for future cases regarding the use of copyrighted materials in AI training.

Initially, both parties agreed on 24 custodians, but they have reached an impasse concerning the inclusion of the six contested individuals.

The ongoing disagreements between the Author's Guild lawyers and OpenAI highlight the complexities of the discovery process in this landmark case.