Some of the world's best-known novelists joined forces this week to sue OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, for using their work to train its artificial intelligence tools, joining their efforts with the growing group of artists, musicians and writers who are trying to stop technology companies from profiting from their work without paying for it.

Highly successful writers such as George R.R. Martin, Jodi Picoult, Jonathan Franzen and George Saunders have signed the lawsuit, which is being led by the Authors Guild, a group that lobbies on behalf of writers. This lawsuit adds to a growing list of copyright lawsuits against OpenAI and other AI companies, including one from comedian Sarah Silverman and another from novelists Mona Awad and Paul Tremblay.

In the indictment, the authors request compensation for the "lost opportunity to license their works" and an injunction against OpenAI to prevent it from continuing to use their works in its training data.

This latest lawsuit alleges that OpenAI copied the authors' work "in its entirety, without authorization or retribution" and used it to train its "big language models" - the giant algorithms that power tools like ChatGPT. "At the heart of these algorithms is systematic theft on a grand scale," the lawsuit says.

In a statement on Wednesday, an OpenAI spokesperson said that the company respects "the rights of writers and authors, and believes that they should benefit from AI technology".

"We are having productive conversations with many creators around the world, including the Authors Guild, and have worked cooperatively to understand and discuss their concerns about AI. We are optimistic that we will continue to find mutually beneficial ways to work together to help people utilize new technologies in a rich content ecosystem," the statement read.

The lawsuit is the latest onslaught in the ongoing debate about how AI tools should be trained and whether the companies behind them owe anything to the original creators of the training data.