Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

OpenAI and Microsoft sued by NY Times for copyright infringement

By

The New York Times has become the first major media organization to take on AI firms in the courts, accusing OpenAI and its backer, Microsoft, of infringing its copyright by using its content to train AI-powered products such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

In a lawsuit filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, the media giant claims that “millions” of its copyrighted articles were used to train its AI technologies, enabling it to compete with the New York Times as a content provider.

The New York Times said in the lawsuit that it wants the two companies to be held liable for “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages.”

OpenAI and similar AI companies trawl the web for content that’s used to train its large language models, which power products like its popular ChatGPT chatbot.

The impending high-profile legal battle will be watched closely by many in the media industry as the court’s rulings could open up a slew of similar claims by other big organizations.

The New York Times lawsuit alleges that if a user asks ChatGPT about recent events, the chatbot will occasionally respond with word-for-word passages from the news organization’s articles that would otherwise need a subscription to access. Links to the original article on the New York Times site are also missing.

The news outlet says that this is leading to a loss of revenue as potential customers are discouraged from taking out a subscription, while income generated from visits to its website is also being lost.

The lawsuit also reveals that the New York Times approached OpenAI and its backer, Microsoft, in the spring in a bid to resolve the issue, but they failed to reach an agreement.

Responding to the action, OpenAI said in a statement: “We respect the rights of content creators and owners and are committed to working with them to ensure they benefit from AI technology and new revenue models. Our ongoing conversations with the New York Times have been productive and moving forward constructively, so we are surprised and disappointed with this development. We’re hopeful that we will find a mutually beneficial way to work together, as we are doing with many other publishers.”

This includes a partnership with German media behemoth Axel Springer that gives OpenAI access to its news content for a fee. Deals like this are expected to become more common as OpenAI and similar firms search for a way to steer clear of more lawsuits.

Earlier this year, a group of prominent authors, including George R.R. Martin, John Grisham, and Jodi Picoult, also filed a lawsuit against OpenAI over a similar issue. And it’s not just written content that’s used by AI firms, with the likes of Midjourney and Stability AI analyzing copyrighted imagery on the web to train text-to-image software capable of creating “original” content. Artists have also been launching lawsuits while taking direct action to confuse the AI systems that analyze their work.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Trevor Mogg
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
How much does an AI supercomputer cost? Try $100 billion
A Microsoft datacenter.

It looks like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Sora, among other projects, are about to get a lot more juice. According to a new report shared by The Information, Microsoft and OpenAI are working on a new data center project, one part of which will be a massive AI supercomputer dubbed "Stargate." Microsoft is said to be footing the bill, and the cost is astronomical as the name of the supercomputer suggests -- the whole project might cost over $100 billion.

Spending over $100 billion on anything is mind-blowing, but when put into perspective, the price truly shows just how big a venture this might be: The Information claims that the new Microsoft and OpenAI joint project might cost a whopping 100 times more than some of the largest data centers currently in operation.

Read more
OpenAI boss takes Sora tech to Hollywood, report claims
An AI image portraying two mammoths that walk through snow, with mountains and a forest in the background.

OpenAI’s new text-to-video artificial intelligence model left jaws on the floor recently when the company offered up examples of what it can do.

Sora, as it’s called, generates astonishingly realistic footage from descriptive text inputs, and while a close look can sometimes reveal slight flaws in the imagery, the technology has left many wondering to what extent it could upend the TV and movie industries.

Read more
We may have just learned how Apple will compete with ChatGPT
An iPhone on a table with the Siri activation animation playing on the screen.

As we approach Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June, the rumor mill has been abuzz with claims over Apple’s future artificial intelligence (AI) plans. Well, there have just been a couple of major developments that shed some light on what Apple could eventually reveal to the world, and you might be surprised at what Apple is apparently working on.

According to Bloomberg, Apple is in talks with Google to infuse its Gemini generative AI tool into Apple’s systems and has also considered enlisting ChatGPT’s help instead. The move with Google has the potential to completely change how the Mac, iPhone, and other Apple devices work on a day-to-day basis, but it could come under severe regulatory scrutiny.

Read more