The New York Times Files Lawsuit Against OpenAI: A Possible Turning Point for AI Copyright Issues?
Summary:
Established media giant The New York Times (NYT) has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the latter of copyright infringement. NYT alleges that OpenAI unlawfully used its content to train its AI chatbots, causing harm to the media company's relationship with its readers and impacting its revenue streams. The lawsuit was filed leveraging the US Constitution and the Copyright Act to safeguard NYT's original journalism. This case holds potential consequence for future AI and copyright regulations. Meanwhile, OpenAI expressed its readiness to cover legal costs of users who may find themselves in a copyright-related legal conflict.
A fresh lawsuit targeting the artificial intelligence (AI) sphere for copyright infringement has emerged, headed this time by established media company The New York Times (NYT). The lawsuit, filed on December 27, accuses OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, for unauthorized use of its content in training AI chatbots, which in turn, impacts the functionality of the NYT. The suit leverages the United States Constitution and the Copyright Act to safeguard NYT's original journalism. It insinuates that Microsoft’s Bing AI generates direct excerpts from its content.
The lawsuit alleges, “Without permission or authorization, the defendants' tools deteriorate and harm The Times's relationship with its readers and strip The Times of its subscription, licensing, advertising, and affiliate earnings.”. NYT is not the lone media entity raising concerns about AI chatbots. In November, the News Media Alliance also expressed allegations that AI chatbots are illicitly duplicating copyrighted news and developers are snatching revenue, data and users from news entities.
Cecilia Ziniti, a lawyer specializing in intellectual property (IP) and AI, acknowledged on social media this litigation to be the “strongest case so far” alleging that generative AI is engaging in copyright infringement.
In her post, Ziniti emphasized a critical argument in the NYT case, which is that the website “www.nytimes.com” is the most well-cited proprietary source, running behind only Wikipedia and a database of U.S. patent documents. The lawsuit cites instances where there are very slight differences – mere words – between original NYT content and GPT-4's output.
According to the filed complaint, the NYT contacted Microsoft and OpenAI in April 2023 to address intellectual property concerns and to negotiate a peaceful resolution, but their efforts were fruitless. Ziniti elaborated that she has been a paid subscriber to NYT and NYT Food archives for a decade and if ChatGPT offered these articles and complete recipes for free, “I would stop subscribing to NYT.”
She believes this case might act as a turning point for AI and copyright regulations. Concurrently, a discussion thread about this litigation was initiated on the OpenAI developer forum, where responses have been varied. Some users showed support for OpenAI and hoped that the NYT would not win, while others described the situation as interesting and stated it was worth pursuing for the Times.
OpenAI is not the unique recipient of such lawsuits. In September, The Author’s Guild, a U.S. guild for authors, also initiated a class-action lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging copyright violation related to the training of their AI models. Universal Music Group filed a similar lawsuit against Anthropic AI in October, alleging copyright infringement on “A large pool of copyrighted works, including lyrics to countless musical compositions” that were owned or controlled by publishers. Midjourney, DeviantArt, and Stability AI are three more companies facing a lawsuit filed by an increasing group of artists over the use of art to train AI models for image generation.
The case was rejected initially by a U.S. judge due to insufficient evidence, but was later reopened and revised with more detailed allegations. OpenAI has expressed its readiness to shoulder any legal expenses that ChatGPT business-tier users may face when entangled in a legal battle pertaining to copyright infringement.
Published At
12/28/2023 12:29:53 PM
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