The New York Times filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft alleging copyright infringement, claiming the tech companies used their articles to train chatbots that now threaten the jobs of journalist.
The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan on Wednesday, said the companies illegally fed ‘millions of articles’ to Microsoft’s Bing Chat and OpenAI’s ChatGPT to develop their products.
‘This action seeks to hold them responsible for the billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages that they owe for the unlawful copying and use of The Times’s uniquely valuable works,’ said the complaint.
The Times argued that OpenAI and Microsoft artificial intelligence programs use large-language models that were developed by copying their articles with a particular emphasis.
The lawsuit said, ‘Defendants seek to free-ride on The Times’s massive investment in its journalism by using it to build substitutive products without permission or payment.’
The New York Times filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft alleging copyright infringement, claiming the tech companies used their articles to train chatbots
In the complaint, The New York Times also alleged Microsoft’s Bing search index copies their online content and gives it to users without permission from the publication and deprives them of subscription, licensing, advertising and affiliate revenue.
One example of misappropriation of commercial referrals they gave is when a user purchases a New York Time’s Wirecutter-recommended product through a link on one of Microsoft’s or OpenAI’s artificial intelligence generated platforms, they do not receive affiliate revenue.
The New York Times also said the artificial intelligence ‘hallucinations’ – a phenomenon that occurs when the chatbots generate false information and wrongly attribute it to a source – is potentially damaging to their reputation.
The Times said using their work has been extremely lucrative for the companies, and they have tried to negotiate with the companies to ensure they received their fair share while working with them to develop their technology but have been unable to reach an agreement.
‘Microsoft’s deployment of Times-trained LLMs throughout its product line helped boost its market capitalization by a trillion dollars in the past year alone. And OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT has driven its valuation to as high as $90 billion,’ said the lawsuit.
In the lawsuit, The Times claimed OpenAI and Microsoft have said their conduct is protected as ‘fair use’ because their use of the content is for a new ‘transformative’ purpose.
The lawsuit claimed the companies illegally fed ‘millions of articles’ to Microsoft’s Bing Chat and OpenAI’s ChatGPT to develop their products
The Times argued the artificial intelligence ‘hallucinations’ – a phenomenon that occurs when the chatbots generate false information and wrongly attribute it to a source – is potentially damaging to their reputation
The Times argued, ‘There is nothing “transformative” about using The Times’s content without payment to create products that substitute for The Times and steal audiences away from it.’
This is the first time a major American media organization has sued the creators of popular artificial intelligence and could carry major legal implications.
The first ever copyright lawsuit against OpenAI was filed in July by a pair of bestselling novelist who claimed ChatGPT’s parent company broke copyright law by training its chatbot to ‘ingest’ their books without permission.
Authors Mona Awad and Paul Tremblay alleged that ChatGPT was trained in part by ‘ingesting’ several of their novels – all without their consent.
Shortly after, comedian Sarah Silverman and authors Richard Kadrey and Christopher Golden filed a lawsuit against Meta Platforms and OpenAI claiming they used copyrighted material to train chat bots.