The New York Times Initiates Legal Proceedings Against OpenAI and Microsoft for Unauthorized Use of Content.
In a significant legal development, the publisher alleges that the leading AI company has been employing its editorial content illicitly to enhance their technology.
As the advent of artificial intelligence from major tech corporations begins to reshape the media industry, leading newspapers and magazines are faced with a critical choice: enter into a licensing agreement with AI behemoths or pursue legal action.
Choosing the latter path, The New York Times has launched a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York against OpenAI, led by Sam Altman. OpenAI is known for its widely used ChatGPT product, which has garnered over 100 million users since its public launch in late 2022. This chatbot, constructed from data harvested across the web, provides tailored responses to user inquiries by leveraging a vast array of collected writings. This shift towards AI-driven news consumption threatens the traditional revenue streams of publishers, as standard web pages used for ad monetization might become obsolete, urging a drastic rethink of their digital future.
The Times alleges that despite attempts to negotiate licensing terms and implement safeguards for a mutually beneficial arrangement with OpenAI, these discussions have not led to a resolution.
The lawsuit asserts that the publication discovered OpenAI utilizing its content without consent to refine their AI models and tools, prompting legal action to seek reparation for the unauthorized copying and use of The Times’s unique and valuable content.
One notable accusation centers around OpenAI’s creation of a dataset named WebText, derived from extensive Reddit content, which purportedly includes a significant amount of content from The Times.
The secret datasets fueling ChatGPT and similar large language models have drawn attention and legal scrutiny. In a congressional hearing, Altman vaguely described the data sources for these models, emphasizing a mix of public, licensed, and reviewer-generated content.
The publication also contends that ChatGPT circumvents its paywall, highlighting instances where the model reproduces extensive portions of its articles. Furthermore, the lawsuit addresses the collaboration between Microsoft and OpenAI in creating a specialized supercomputing infrastructure to process and train on data, including The Times’s content.
Additionally, The Times accuses Microsoft of infringing its copyright through AI-enhanced features in Bing search engine, alleging unauthorized replication of its content for AI-generated search results.
This lawsuit emerges following another major publisher, Axel Springer, opting for a different strategy with OpenAI by entering into a financial agreement. This move, exemplified by Axel Springer’s brands like Politico engaging in AI product training, represents an attempt to harness the potential of AI-enhanced journalism.
Other major players in the publishing industry, including News Corp. and IAC, are also exploring strategies to leverage their content for AI, aiming to capitalize on the revenue opportunities while addressing the challenges posed by generative AI technology.
As the industry confronts these issues, the outcomes of such legal confrontations and strategic decisions will undoubtedly shape the future of content creation and consumption in the AI era.
