In a legal move that could have significant implications for the tech industry, the New York Times has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT, and Microsoft, alleging copyright infringement that amounts to “billions of dollars” in damages.
The lawsuit claims that ChatGPT, a language model, used “millions” of articles from the New York Times without permission, asserting that the content was utilized to train the system and enhance its capabilities.
The complaint argues that ChatGPT now competes with the New York Times as a reliable source of information, as the language model sometimes generates “verbatim excerpts” from the newspaper’s articles when asked about current events.
These excerpts are allegedly accessible without a subscription, leading to potential losses in subscription revenue and advertising clicks for the New York Times.
The lawsuit also points out instances where the Bing search engine, powered by ChatGPT, reportedly produced results sourced from a New York Times-owned website without proper attribution or referral links, impacting the newspaper’s income streams.
Microsoft, which has invested over $10 billion in OpenAI, is named as a defendant in the lawsuit. The legal action was initiated after unsuccessful attempts by the New York Times to reach an “amicable resolution” with Microsoft and OpenAI in April regarding the alleged copyright infringement.
This lawsuit follows a turbulent period at OpenAI, including the temporary sacking and subsequent rehiring of CEO Sam Altman.
The company is currently facing multiple legal challenges in 2023, including a similar copyright infringement case brought by a group of US authors, legal action by comedian Sarah Silverman, and a joint lawsuit with Microsoft and GitHub from a group of computing experts who claim their code was used without permission to train an AI called Copilot.
The outcomes of these legal battles remain unresolved.
Source: PhilNews24 | December 28, 2023
