The New York Times has set its sights on OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging the unauthorized use of its content in developing cutting-edge artificial intelligence tools. The publisher has taken a bold stance against the AI giant, claiming that its prized writing has been utilized “without permission” to bolster the development of innovative models and tools.
The surge of artificial intelligence products wielded by tech behemoths has cast a shadow over the media landscape, forcing major newspaper and magazine entities into a perplexing quandary: engage in lucrative licensing deals with AI giants or wage war through legal channels.
Opting for the latter, The New York Times lodged a lawsuit in the U.S. Southern District of New York against OpenAI, spearheaded by Sam Altman, the driving force behind the widely popular ChatGPT product. Since its public release in late 2022, ChatGPT has attracted a staggering 100 million users, employing a chatbot constructed from data gleaned across the expansive realm of the internet. This versatile bot delivers tailored responses to user inquiries, drawing upon a vast reservoir of written content.
The implications of consumers turning to chatbots for news consumption could potentially relegate individual web pages — the bastions of publishers’ advertising monetization — to obsolescence, compelling publishers to radically overhaul their online future. The lawsuit claims that despite The Times’ attempts to negotiate a content licensing deal with OpenAI in April, discussions failed to yield a resolution, including mutually agreed-upon terms designed to ensure a symbiotic exchange of value.
The crux of the complaint centers on The Times’ objection to OpenAI’s unauthorized use of its content in developing AI models and tools. The legal action aims to hold the defendants accountable for the alleged unlawful copying and use of The Times’ esteemed intellectual property, seeking redress for purportedly owed billions in statutory and actual damages.
Notably, the lawsuit highlights instances where The Times alleges infringement by OpenAI, citing the creation of a data set dubbed WebText, compiled from a substantial volume of Reddit content. Within Reddit users’ posts, an abundance of scraped content from The Times purportedly exists, adding weight to the publisher’s claims of copyright violation.
The closely guarded datasets powering ChatGPT and similar expansive language models have come under intense scrutiny amidst mounting legal challenges against OpenAI. During a Congressional hearing in May, Altman offered a cryptic explanation, stating, “Our models are trained on a broad range of data that includes publicly available content, licensed content, and content generated by human reviewers.”
This legal showdown between The New York Times and AI juggernauts OpenAI and Microsoft epitomizes a pivotal clash at the intersection of media, intellectual property, and technological innovation, with far-reaching implications for the future landscape of content creation and utilization in the AI era.
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