The New York Times (NYT) has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, accusing them of copyright infringement. The newspaper claims that the two tech giants developed their artificial intelligence (AI) models by copying and leveraging a huge number of Times articles, leading to direct competition with its content.
According to the lawsuit, the Times claims that OpenAI and Microsoft’s large language models (LLMs), which are the driving force behind ChatGPT and Copilot, have the ability to produce results that either directly quote, or closely summarize, or imitate the expressive style of the Times’ content. The paper claims that this practice not only undermines and damages its relationship with its readers, but also results in lost revenue from subscriptions, licensing, and of course advertising. The lawsuit also argues that specific AI models pose a threat to high-quality journalism by reducing the ability of news outlets to secure and leverage their content.
The defendants, through Microsoft’s Bing Chat (recently renamed “Copilot”) and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, are allegedly taking advantage of the Times’ significant investment in its journalism to create substitute products without obtaining permission or making any payment. The lawsuit also says that developing artificial intelligence models trained on the Times’ content has proven highly profitable for both Microsoft and OpenAI. The newspaper claims it has been trying to negotiate with the two companies for several months to ensure it receives fair value for the use of its content, but these efforts have yielded no results. OpenAI spokeswoman Lindsey Held, in a statement to The Verge, expressed respect for the rights of creators and content owners and affirmed a commitment to work with them to ensure they benefit from AI technology and new revenue models. Held said their ongoing discussions with The New York Times have been constructive and progressive, expressing surprise and disappointment at this development. Held hoped to find a mutually beneficial way to work together, as OpenAI has already done with many other publishers.
Microsoft has not yet made any statement on the matter. The New York Times is suing both companies for copyright infringement and is seeking to hold them liable for billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages for allegedly copying its content. The Times is also asking the court to bar OpenAI and Microsoft from training their AI models using its content and to remove the paper’s work from the two companies’ data sets. The New York Times is among several news outlets that have recently blocked OpenAI’s web crawler, preventing the AI firm from continuing to crawl content from its website to train its AI models. The BBC, CNN and Reuters have also taken steps to block OpenAI’s web crawler.
However, other publications welcome AI, or at least the payments associated with it. Axel Springer, owner of Politico and Business Insider, recently struck a deal with OpenAI that allows ChatGPT to pull information directly from both sources.
Similarly, the Associated Press is allowing OpenAI to train its models on its news stories for the next two years.
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