Reuters.

Dear Commons Communjty,

The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement yesterday, opening a new front in the legal battle over the unauthorized use of published work to train artificial intelligence technologies.  The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, contends that millions of articles published by The Times were used to train automated chatbots that now compete with the news outlet as a source of reliable information.

The Times is the first major American media organization to sue the companies, the creators of ChatGPT and other popular A.I. platforms, over copyright issues associated with its written works. As reported by the Times.

The suit does not include an exact monetary demand. But it says the defendants should be held responsible for “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages” related to the “unlawful copying and use of The Times’s uniquely valuable works.” It also calls for the companies to destroy any chatbot models and training data that use copyrighted material from The Times.

In its complaint, The Times said it approached Microsoft and OpenAI in April to raise concerns about the use of its intellectual property and explore “an amicable resolution,” possibly involving a commercial agreement and “technological guardrails” around generative A.I. products. But it said the talks had not produced a resolution.

An OpenAI spokeswoman, Lindsey Held, said in a statement that the company had been “moving forward constructively” in conversations with The Times and that it was “surprised and disappointed” by the lawsuit.

“We respect the rights of content creators and owners and are committed to working with them to ensure they benefit from A.I. technology and new revenue models,” Ms. Held said. “We’re hopeful that we will find a mutually beneficial way to work together, as we are doing with many other publishers.”

Microsoft declined to comment on the case.

The lawsuit could test the emerging legal contours of generative A.I. technologies — so called for the text, images and other content they can create after learning from large data sets — and could carry major implications for the news industry.

This lawsuit can have enormous repercussions for the AI industry.  Generative AI programs such as ChatGPT and Bard cannot build the databases that drive their searches without using the content provided by news and other media outlets.  And if they have to pay the providers for the content, it would severely impact their profitability.

Tony

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