Introduction
The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft Corp for copyright infringement. The lawsuit claims that the AI chatbot (AI) based on ChatGPT was trained on articles from the newspaper without permission. By training the chatbot on its content, ChatGPT is creating a competitor to the New York Times and stealing readers, according to the lawsuit.
The Lawsuit
The New York Times filed a copyright infringement lawsuit in a U.S. court in New York on Wednesday, claiming that OpenAI and its largest investor, Microsoft Corp, trained the famous AI chatbot on millions of articles from the newspaper. The New York Times claims that “the use of the newspaper’s content without payment to create products that replace the newspaper” makes the chatbot a competitor and steals readers.
The lawsuit does not specify a certain amount of money but claims that the companies should be liable for billions of dollars in damages and that the models and data using information from the newspaper should be destroyed.
This is the first lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft brought by a major media organization for copyright infringement, but it is not the first legal challenge to ChatGPT. Prominent writers including John Grisham, Jonathan Franzen, and Jodi Picoult have filed similar lawsuits against OpenAI in September. The writers claimed that OpenAI is committing “widespread systematic theft” by using their books to train the chatbot without their permission.
Potential Implications
The New York Times’ lawsuit comes as responsibility for AI tools is increasingly on the minds of government officials. Experts say the U.S. may regulate the safety, security, and transparency of AI tools in 2024.
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