The New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, claiming the two companies built their AI models by “copying and using millions” of the publication’s articles and now “directly compete” with its content as a result.
As outlined in the lawsuit, the Times alleges OpenAI and Microsoft’s large language models (LLMs), which power ChatGPT and Copilot, “can generate output that recites Times content verbatim, closely summarizes it, and mimics its expressive style.” This “undermine[s] and damage[s]” the Times’ relationship with readers, the outlet alleges, while also depriving it of “subscription, licensing, advertising, and affiliate revenue.”
The complaint also argues that these AI models “threaten high-quality journalism” by hurting the ability of news outlets to protect and monetize content. “Through Microsoft’s Bing Chat (recently rebranded as “Copilot”) and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, 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 lawsuit states.
The full text of the lawsuit can be found here
Really seemed like this was inevitable - it will be interesting to see if their fair use defense pans out.
I don’t expect it will, and I’m worried of the impact of that precedent on the legitimate fair use circuit…
I’m amazed that it’s taken this long for a high profile lawsuit about it.
Is AI just a giant screen scraper with a presentation layer? I always thought of it more like Asimov’s positronic brain.
To be fair some of the chat bots are effectively just that. They have “scrapped” their data models and outputing it in a way that seems like you are having a conversation with the “bot”.
