The New York Times filed a lawsuit Wednesday against OpenAI and its partner Microsoft for allegedly using the publication’s copyrighted articles to train its artificial intelligence-powered chatbots, the media outlet announced.
According to the lawsuit, the companies used a number of online sources to train their AI systems, but “they gave Times content particular emphasis when building their [large language models]—revealing a preference that recognizes the value of those works.”
The Times claims that “millions” of its articles were used to create products that “compete with it” and threaten its ability to continue to provide its services. The complaint states that Microsoft and OpenAI used copyrighted material to train Bing Chat and ChatGPT.
It accused the companies of attempting to hitch a “free-ride on The Times’s massive investment in its journalism by using it to build substitutive products without permission or payment.” Furthermore, according to the complaint, the companies’ products produce “verbatim excerpts and detailed summaries” of the media outlet’s pieces.
The parties have reportedly attempted to reach an agreement on using the copyrighted content, but negotiations have not yielded a resolution.
“Publicly, Defendants insists that their conduct is protested as ‘fair use’ because their unlicensed use of copyrighted content to train [generative AI] models serves a new ‘transformative’ purpose,” the lawsuit continued. “But there is nothing ‘transformative’ about using The Times’s content without payment to create products that substitute for The Times and steal audiences away from it.”
The Times seeks to hold the companies “responsible for the billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages that they owe for the unlawful copying and the use of The Times’s uniquely valuable work.”
According to the media outlet, generative AI products “threaten high-quality journalism,” noting that abandoned traditional business models and “misinformation” have made it “harder than ever” to produce “great journalism.”
It is requesting unspecified damages and a court order for the “destruction” of “all GPT or other LLM models and training sets that incorporate Times Works.”
A spokesperson for the Times told the New York Post that the companies’ AI-powered products were “built with and continue to use independent journalism and content that is only available because we and our peers reported, edited, and fact-checked it at high cost and with considerable expertise.”
“Settled copyright law protects our journalism and content. If Microsoft and OpenAI want to use our work for commercial purposes, the law requires that they first obtain our permission,” the spokesperson added. “They have not done so.”
The Times shared its article about the lawsuit on X Wednesday. Some users applauded its decision to take legal action, while many others slammed the publication.
“Trying to squeeze any dime possible to aid your failing business,” one X user wrote.
“In a few short years the new york times went from a legitimate newspaper to government propaganda outlet spreading misinformation to a copyright troll,” another chimed in.
Neither Microsoft nor OpenAI responded to a request for comment from the Post.
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