Written by Samah Labib Thursday, December 28, 2023 11:27am The New York Times has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft for using published news articles to train AI chatbots without an agreement to compensate them for their intellectual property.
The lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Manhattan, marks the first time a major news organization has prosecuted ChatGPT’s developers for copyright infringement. The New York Times did not specify the amount it is seeking from the companies, but the action aims to hold the companies responsible: billions of dollars in legal and actual damages.
The New York Times claims that OpenAI and Microsoft, the makers of Chat GPT and Copilot, are “trying to profit gratuitously from the Times’ massive investment in its journalism” without any licensing agreement.
In one part of the complaint, The New York Times pointed out that its NyeTimes.com domain was the most frequently mined proprietary source for GPT-3 training content.
It says more than 66 million records, ranging from breaking news stories to opinion pieces, published on The New York Times websites and other affiliated brands, were used to train the AI models.
The indictment alleges that the defendants in the case used “nearly a century of copyrighted content,” causing significant damage to the Times’ feed. The New York Times also states that OpenAI and Microsoft products can “generate output that lists the Times’ content verbatim and closely summarizes it.” , and mimics his expressive style, echoing other complaints from authors like Sarah Silverman and Julian Sancton who say OpenAI has profited from their work.
“We respect the rights of content creators and owners and are committed to working with them to ensure they benefit from AI technology and new revenue models,” an OpenAI spokesperson told Engadget. In an email, the representative explained that the two sides are engaged in ongoing “productive conversations” and the company described the lawsuit as nonexistent.
“We are surprised and disappointed by this development,” an OpenAI spokesperson told Engadget, however OpenAI hopes the two find a “mutually beneficial way to work together.”
If the lawsuit progresses, it could create opportunities for other publishers to pursue similar lawsuits and make AI training models more expensive for commercial purposes, and competitors in this space, such as CNN, have already sought to limit data that AI web crawlers can collect for training and development purposes.
2023-12-28 09:27:00
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