A war of words has broken out between The New York Times and OpenAI and Microsoft – the creators of ChatGPT and other popular AI platforms – over NYT’s lawsuit over copyright issues associated with its written works.
According to the NYT lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan on 27 December 2023, millions of articles published by The Times were used to train automated chatbots such as the ChatGPT. These now compete with the news outlet as a source of reliable information, NYT said.
The suit does not mention an exact monetary demand but it says the defendants should be held responsible for “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages” related to the “unlawful copying and use of The Times’s uniquely valuable works.” It calls for the companies to destroy any chatbot models and training data that use copyrighted material from The Times.
In its complaint, The Times said it approached Microsoft and OpenAI in April to raise concerns about the use of its intellectual property and explore “an amicable resolution,” possibly involving a commercial agreement and “technological guardrails” around generative AI products. But it said the talks had not produced a resolution.
OpenAI on its part said the lawsuit against it was “without merit” and that it supported and created opportunities for news organizations.
In a 1,000-word blog post on 8 January 2024, OpenAI said it collaborated with news organizations and had struck partnerships with some of them, including The Associated Press. Using copyrighted works to train its technologies is fair use under the law, the company added. The Times’ lawsuit does not tell the full story of how OpenAI and its technologies operate, it said.
“We look forward to continued collaboration with news organizations, helping elevate their ability to produce quality journalism by realizing the transformative potential of A.I.,” the company wrote.
An OpenAI spokeswoman, Lindsey Held, had earlier said in a statement that the company had been “moving forward constructively” in conversations with The Times and that it was “surprised and disappointed” by the lawsuit.
The Times was the first major American media organization to sue OpenAI and Microsoft over copyright issues related to its written works. Other groups, including novelists and computer programmers, have also filed copyright suits against AI companies. The suits have been spurred by the boom in “generative AI,” technologies that generate text, images and other media from short prompts.
(Compiled from an NYT article)
