The New York Times is the first major US news organization to sue OpenAI over its artificial intelligence chatbots. The tech companies are accused of taking a “free ride” on millions articles in order to create the revolutionary technology.
The newspaper wants unspecified billions in damages from both companies for “profit[ing]” from massive copyright violations, commercial exploitation, and misappropriation The Times’s Intellectual Property.
Media companies are increasingly worried about generative AI models, which can produce humanlike text and images in seconds.
AI has said that ingesting, processing and storing vast amounts of data that are available on the internet is “fair use” according to US copyright laws. Publishers are worried that chatbots such as OpenAI ChatGPT will reduce their traffic and revenues.
The lawsuit filed by The Times in New York Wednesday alleged that “Defendants’ unlawful use of The Times’s work to develop artificial intelligence products that are competitive with The Times threatens The Times’s ability to deliver this service” of news analysis and commentary.
The newspaper claimed that the two tech firms had tried to “free-ride” on The Times massive investment in journalism by building substitute products without permission or compensation.
OpenAI stated: “We respect content creators’ and owners’ rights and are committed in working with them so that they can benefit from AI technology as well as new revenue models. We are disappointed and surprised by this news. Our conversations with the New York Times were productive and progressing constructively. We are hopeful that we can find a mutually-beneficial way to work together as we do with other publishers.
Microsoft has not responded to a comment request.
Microsoft is OpenAI ‘s largest backer , after investing up to $13bn in order to drive the company’s rapid growth and to provide the massive technical infrastructure required to create AI models. OpenAI’s GPT is also used by Microsoft to power Bing Chat.
For several weeks, news publishers from around the globe have met with AI companies such as OpenAI and Microsoft to try to negotiate deals for licensing their content.
Axel Springer , a German publisher, has struck a deal worth tens millions of euro per year with OpenAI to allow its AI systems to use content from outlets like Bild, Politico, and Business Insider.
The Times’ lawsuit claims that the company has been in similar discussions “for many months” with Microsoft and OpenAI. The Times’ lawsuit stated that “these negotiations have not resulted in a resolution”.
The Times’ challenge is just the latest in a string of lawsuits against OpenAI alleging copyright violations. A group of bestselling writers including John Grisham and David Baldacci sued OpenAI in September accusing the group’s algorithms of “systematic theft at a large scale”.
The New Yorker’s Jia Tolentino and other writers, including Julian Sancton, filed a similar lawsuit the month after.
OpenAI’s attorneys have not yet responded to these two lawsuits, but they have answered a proposed California class action, arguing that certain claims should be dismissed because its model can rely upon the “fair-use” doctrine. The lawyers claimed that this doctrine was interpreted by “numerous court” as meaning that “innovators using copyrighted material in transformative ways do not violate copyright”.
OpenAI’s attorneys have also cited an order from a California court in a separate case brought by comedian Sarah Silverman, writer Ta-Nehisi Coates and others against Meta’s AI Model, where the court determined that the output produced by the large language model of the company was not “substantially” similar to the books by the plaintiffs.