Founded in 1851, The New York Times, one of the leading US daily newspapers, sued OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, and Microsoft, creator of Copilot, yesterday morning. The newspaper’s accusation is over the unauthorized use of millions of its articles for the training of chatbots. The New York Times emphasizes that it is the first major US media outlet to sue these technology companies over copyright issues related to their works. In this article, we will focus specifically on the OpenAI case.
Authors and other contributors have also sued to limit the use of their online content by artificial intelligence services without compensation and the automatic collection of data, Reuters reports. The newspaper’s complaint, filed in Manhattan federal court, accuses OpenAI and Microsoft of trying to “make the Times’ huge investment in its journalism for free” in order to provide information to readers. “There is nothing ‘transformative’ about using the Times’ content without paying for it to create products that replace the Times and take audiences away from it,” the Times charged.
ChatGPT and OpenAI
Despite these accusations, OpenAI maintains that the use of copyrighted works to train AI products is “fair use”. “Fair use” is a legal doctrine that regulates the unlicensed use of copyrighted material.
The lawsuit states that OpenAI and Microsoft’s chatbots offer users almost verbatim excerpts from their articles. The Times alleges that such infringement threatens high-quality journalism, causing readers to reduce traffic and affecting its revenues. The Times also states that misinformation, which it characterizes as “hallucinations” in the language of artificial intelligence, makes it difficult for readers to distinguish fact from fiction.
The New York Times
The New York Times, claiming to be the largest source of data used to train GPT, argues that it has suffered losses estimated in the billions of dollars, although it does not seek specific damages.
The Times wants OpenAI and Microsoft to destroy the chatbot models and training sets containing the Times materials.
Analyzing the details of the case, Cecilia Ziniti, an intellectual property and artificial intelligence expert, said it was “the best case ever alleging copyright infringement by generative AI”. According to Ziniti, by showing the similarity between the Times’ articles and ChatGPT’s outputs, it is possible to say that this case is based on a solid foundation.
Artificial Intelligence Model Training
Diane Brayton, the Times’ general counsel, emphasized that it may be possible to use their content for training artificial intelligence models, but that this would require the permission and agreement required by law.
