The New York Times has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT, alleging copyright infringement in training its AI models.
This legal action, which also involves Microsoft, seeks “billions of dollars” in damages, asserting that these companies are accountable for unauthorized use of the Times’ content.
According to the lawsuit, ChatGPT and similar large language models learn through analyzing vast online data and the Times claims that “millions” of its articles were used without consent to enhance ChatGPT’s capabilities.
The newspaper argues that this AI tool now competes as a credible information source, sometimes generating verbatim excerpts from Times’ articles, which are typically behind a paywall.
The lawsuit contends that this practice allows readers to access Times’ content without subscription, leading to revenue loss from subscriptions and advertising clicks.
Additionally, the lawsuit highlights instances where Bing search results, powered by ChatGPT, pull information from Times-owned websites without proper attribution or links that generate income.
The legal action was initiated after unsuccessful attempts by the Times to resolve the copyright issue with Microsoft and OpenAI earlier this year.
It comes amidst a turbulent period at OpenAI, involving the removal and subsequent rehiring of CEO Sam Altman.
The company is facing multiple lawsuits, including a previous copyright infringement case filed by authors and a lawsuit alongside Microsoft and GitHub regarding the use of code to train an AI called Copilot.
This lawsuit joins a series of legal battles against AI developers, with creators of generative AI facing lawsuits over copyright infringement related to text-to-image generators.
While these cases remain unresolved, they highlight the ongoing legal complexities surrounding the use of copyrighted material in AI development.
Source-BBC
