New York Times sues Microsoft and OpenAI

The New York Times, a US-based news organization, has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT, for alleged copyright infringement in their system training.

The lawsuit, naming Microsoft as the other defendant, holds them accountable for “billions of dollars” in damages.

According to the lawsuit, a significant number of New York Times articles were allegedly utilized without authorization to improve ChatGPT’s capabilities. It is also alleged that this tool is now in direct competition with the newspaper as a reliable source of information.

According to the allegation, ChatGPT has been known to produce “verbatim excerpts” from New York Times articles in response to questions about current events. However, these excerpts are only available through a paid subscription.

As stated in the lawsuit, this results in readers accessing New York Times content at no cost, thereby causing a decline in subscription revenue and online advertising clicks.

The article also mentioned Bing, a search engine that utilizes ChatGPT to provide certain features. It noted that the search engine displayed results from a New York Times-owned website but did not include a link or any referral links that generate revenue.

The lawsuit also reveals that the New York Times had reached out to Microsoft and OpenAI in April for an amicable resolution regarding copyright but without success.

This update arrives a month following a tumultuous period at OpenAI, during which co-founder and CEO Sam Altman was fired and subsequently brought back within a few days.

The termination of his employment caused a stir among those in the industry and prompted staff members to threaten widespread resignations unless he was brought back.

In addition to the aforementioned internal concerns, the company is also currently contending with numerous legal actions brought against them in 2023.

Last September, a group of American authors, including George RR Martin and John Grisham, filed a similar lawsuit for copyright infringement.

Legal action, brought by comedian Sarah Silverman in July, was followed by an open letter signed by authors Margaret Atwood and Philip Pullman that same month, urging AI companies to provide compensation for the use of their work.

OpenAI, along with Microsoft and the programming site GitHub, is currently embroiled in a lawsuit brought forth by a group of computing experts. The experts claim that their code was utilized without their consent to train an AI known as Copilot.

In addition to these measures, numerous lawsuits have been filed against developers of generative AI, which refers to artificial intelligence capable of generating media from written instructions. In January, artists took legal action against text-to-image generators Stability AI and Midjourney, alleging their functionality relies on copyright-protected artwork for training purposes.

None of the legal cases have been settled yet.