NY Times Sues Microsoft, Open AI For Alleged Copyright Infringement
In a case which could have significant implications for AI, the New York Times has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI - the makers of ChatGPT, and Microsoft, for alleged copyright infringement.
The lawsuit claims that the companies violated copyright laws by using Times' content to train their AI models, including ChatGPT and Microsoft's Copilot.
"Times journalism is the work of thousands of journalists, whose employment costs hundreds of millions of dollars per year," reads the complaint. "Defendants have effectively avoided spending the billions of dollars that The Times invested in creating that work by taking it without permission or compensation."
The Times, which has asked for a jury trial in the Southern District of New York, argues that the AI tools divert traffic from its platforms, which impacts advertising, licensing and subscription revenues. The outlet seeks damages and an injunction against the use of their content by these tech companies - arguing that a 'significant investment in journalism' has been undermined, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The lawsuit has potentially huge implications over 'fair use' of copyrighted materials, a complex legal doctrine governing factors such as the purpose of use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount and substantiality of the portion used, and the effect of the use on the potential market for the copyrighted work.
The legal landscape surrounding generative-AI is unsettled, with the technology still in its early days. There are other lawsuits that could test the rights of AI companies to “scrape” content from the web to train AI tools, including one by several prominent book authors against OpenAI. In February, Getty Images sued the AI art company Stability AI in Delaware, alleging that it had infringed on Getty’s copyrights. Stability AI at the time said it doesn’t comment on pending litigation. -WSJ
The Times says that the AI tools developed by Microsoft and OpenAI have significantly increased their valuations due to the data 'scraped' for training.
According to the Journal, the US Copyright Office says it's launched an initiative to study the issue, including "the use of copyrighted materials in AI training," and said in August that it issued a notice to seek comment on the issue as part of a process to determine whether legislative or regulatory steps are in order.
Some publishers, meanwhile, such as the Associated Press and Axel Springer, have inked deals to license their content to OpenAI.
Microsoft invested $13 billion in OpenAI in exchange for roughly a 49% stake in the earnings of its for-profit arm. According to the Times' lawsuit, the tools that were trained in part on their content have resulted in massive increases in their valuations. "Using the valuable intellectual property of others in these ways without paying for it has been extremely lucrative for Defendants."
Guess training your AI on woke, litigious (and fake news) media content wasn't the best idea, Sam...
THE TIMES SUES OPENAI AND MICROSOFT OVER A.I.’S USE OF COPYRIGHTED WORK - NYT
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 27, 2023
Oh no, however will ChatNPC become more woke now?