The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft on Wednesday, accusing them of using millions of the newspaper’s articles without permission to help train artificial intelligence technologies.
The Times said it is the first major US media organisation to sue OpenAI and Microsoft, which created ChatGPT and other AI platforms, over copyright issues.
With the suit, The New York Times chose a more confrontational approach to the sudden rise of AI chatbots, in contrast to other media groups such as Germany’s Axel Springer or the Associated Press that have entered content deals with OpenAI.
The publication said the defendants were trying to “freeride on The Times’s massive investment in its journalism by using it to build substitutive products without permission or payment,” according to the complaint filed in Manhattan federal court.
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“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,” the Times said.
OpenAI and Microsoft did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Times is not seeking a specific amount of damages, but it said OpenAI and Microsoft have caused “billions of dollars” in damages. It also wants the companies to destroy chatbot models and training sets that incorporate its material.
The AI models that power ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot (formerly Bing) were trained for years on content available on the internet, under the assumption that it was fair to be used without need for compensation.
These tools were built with and continue to use independent journalism and content that is only available because we and our peers reported, edited, and fact-checked it at high cost and with considerable expertise
But the lawsuit argued that the unlawful use of the Times’ work to create artificial intelligence products threatened its ability to provide quality journalism.
“These tools were built with and continue to use independent journalism and content that is only available because we and our peers reported, edited, and fact-checked it at high cost and with considerable expertise,” a spokesperson for the Times said.
While OpenAI’s parent is a non-profit company, Microsoft has invested US$13 billion in a for-profit subsidiary, for what would be a 49 per cent stake.
Investors have valued OpenAI at more than US$80 billion.
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Others have challenged OpenAI’s alleged misuse of their copyright material.
Novelists including David Baldacci, Jonathan Franzen, John Grisham and Scott Turow have also sued OpenAI and Microsoft in the Manhattan court, claiming that AI systems might have co-opted tens of thousands of their books.
And in July, the comedian Sarah Silverman sued OpenAI and Meta Platforms in San Francisco for having allegedly “ingested” her book “The Bedwetter” to train ChatGPT.
With lawsuits piling up, Microsoft and AI player Google have announced they would provide legal protection for customers sued for copyright infringement over content generated by its AI.