The New York Times has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT, and Microsoft, seeking “billions of dollars” in damages for alleged copyright infringement. The lawsuit contends that ChatGPT used “millions” of New York Times articles without permission, impacting the media outlet’s revenue.
ChatGPT, along with other large language models, learns by analyzing vast amounts of data, often sourced online. The lawsuit claims that ChatGPT competes with the New York Times as a trustworthy information source, generating “verbatim excerpts” from articles when asked about current events. This allegedly allows readers to access New York Times content without subscribing.
The Bing search engine, powered by ChatGPT, is accused of producing results from a New York Times-owned website without proper attribution. Microsoft, a defendant in the case, has invested over $10 billion in OpenAI.
The lawsuit, filed in a Manhattan federal court, alleges copyright infringement and highlights previous attempts by The New York Times to reach an “amicable resolution” with Microsoft and OpenAI in April, which were unsuccessful.
Too many lawsuits against Open AI before New York Times sues them
OpenAI, which recently faced internal turmoil with CEO Sam Altman briefly being sacked and then rehired, is simultaneously contending with multiple lawsuits in 2023. These include a similar copyright infringement case from U.S. authors, comedian Sarah Silverman’s legal action, and a lawsuit from computing experts claiming their code was used without permission for AI training. Generative AI developers, including Stability AI and Midjourney, are also facing lawsuits from artists for training on copyrighted artwork. As of now, none of these lawsuits have been resolved.
