The New York Times has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI, claiming that the tech companies violated copyright laws by using millions of articles to train their artificial intelligence models. The complaint asserts that OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot, two AI models, replicate, summarise, and mimic the writing style of the Times, so competing with its content.
ok, I've now read the full NYT complaint filed this morning vs OpenAI and Microsoft. I'm impressed – it's future-focused around fair value for work vital to democracy. It also contains 220k pages of exhibits although the pages of Ex J stood out to me. more on that in a minute. /1 pic.twitter.com/e394EZYCed
— Jason Kint (@jason_kint) December 27, 2023
The complaint claims that the AI models put the Times’ reader relationships at risk and reduce its income from subscriptions, licensing, advertising, and affiliates. Such actions, according to the lawsuit, undermine news organizations’ capacity to protect and monetize their content, which in turn threatens high-quality journalism.
According to the journal, discussions with both corporations did not result in a reasonable pay deal, even though the publication had tried to negotiate it. The response from OpenAI was a mix of surprise and disappointment, with the company reiterating its dedication to working with content creators and highlighting its continuing productive discussions with the Times.
The lawsuit urges the court to stop OpenAI and Microsoft from training their AI models using the Times’ content and demands the removal of the publication’s work from the companies’ datasets. It seeks penalties in the billions of dollars for alleged copyright infringement.
The New York Times is one of numerous media organizations that has taken action against OpenAI by blocking their web crawler. This will ensure that the AI startup cannot use its content to train its models. The BBC, CNN, and Reuters are among the news outlets that have limited access to artificial intelligence, in contrast to Axel Springer’s Politico and Business Insider, which have both reached agreements permitting such access. For the following two years, OpenAI will be able to utilize news stories from the Associated Press to train its artificial intelligence models.
Below is the attached Document of the lawsuit:
Doc Credit: Vox.com
