ChatGPT starts blocking direct requests to copy an author's style

ChatGPT is now refusing direct requests to generate text that copies the exact style of famous authors, instead offering to capture the "broad qualities" of their work while maintaining a distinct voice. This change matters because it could have legal implications for OpenAI, which faces multiple copyright infringement lawsuits from authors who claim the model was trained on their copyrighted work. Under US copyright law, while style itself is generally not protected, an AI-generated imitation could become infringing if it becomes "substantially similar" to an author's original work. The shift represents a notable departure from how other major AI models handle such requests, which range from consistently complying to refusing with redirects to somewhere in between.