New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, and others sue OpenAI and Microsoft

🌈 Abstract

The article discusses a lawsuit filed by several news organizations, including the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, and Orlando Sentinel, against OpenAI and Microsoft for alleged copyright infringement. The news organizations claim that both OpenAI and Microsoft trained their AI models, such as ChatGPT and Copilot, on the publications' articles without compensation or permission.

🙋 Q&A

[01] Copyright Infringement Lawsuit

1. What are the key claims made by the news organizations in the lawsuit?

• The news organizations, all owned by the hedge fund Alden Global Capital, claim that OpenAI and Microsoft trained their AI models on the publications' articles without compensation or permission.
• They provided evidence of ChatGPT and Copilot reproducing lengthy excerpts of specific articles on command, indicating that the training datasets included the texts of those articles.
• They also showed screenshots of Copilot reproducing entire news articles verbatim a day or two after the articles were posted, without a prominent hyperlink back to the original.
• The companies claim that the chatbots often attribute false facts or hallucinations to the publications.

2. What is the main argument made by the news organizations in the lawsuit? The news organizations argue that companies using copyrighted material for their AI models "must obtain the publishers' consent to use their content and pay fair value for such use." They claim that OpenAI and Microsoft are not entitled to use the copyrighted newspaper content to build their new trillion-dollar enterprises without paying for that content.

3. How do the news organizations respond to the companies' claims about the use of their content? The news organizations point to comments made by company executives, notably OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, that AI models cannot train without copyrighted material. They also state that OpenAI demonstrated the ability to bypass paywalls and that AI models can block chatbots from spitting out copyrighted work, but OpenAI rarely deployed that capability.

[02] Responses from OpenAI and Microsoft

1. How have OpenAI and Microsoft responded to the lawsuit?

• OpenAI has sought to dismiss the New York Times' lawsuit, saying the publication manipulated ChatGPT into faithfully reproducing its work.
• Microsoft has invoked the VCR to claim that AI models are merely tools, which could theoretically be used to infringe on copyright, but "are capable of substantial lawful use."

2. What is the broader context of the lawsuit? The lawsuit echoes many of the same claims made by other news organizations, such as the New York Times, The Intercept, AlterNet, and Raw Story, in suing OpenAI and Microsoft for alleged copyright infringement.