The New York Times has taken legal action against OpenAI and Microsoft, filing a federal lawsuit to halt the practice of using its articles to train chatbots. The newspaper alleges that OpenAI and Microsoft are jeopardizing its business by essentially appropriating the extensive work of its journalists.
In some instances, the lawsuit claims, the companies are generating AI responses using Times' content verbatim. The legal action, initiated in federal court in Manhattan, follows apparent breakdowns in discussions between the newspaper and the technology firms, which commenced in April.
The news industry has already experienced challenges due to readers' shift to online platforms, and AI's rapid advancement poses an additional threat. Web traffic is crucial for the Times' advertising revenue and online subscriptions. The lawsuit argues that AI chatbots, utilizing material from the Times, redirect this traffic away from the paper, diminishing the likelihood that users will visit the original source.
Ian B. Crosby, partner and lead counsel at Susman Godfrey, representing The Times, emphasized that these chatbots are competing with the content they are trained on. In response, an OpenAI spokesperson stated that the company respects content creators' rights and is committed to collaborating constructively, expressing surprise and disappointment with the lawsuit.
This legal action follows a trend of growing copyright infringement lawsuits against OpenAI, with several writers, including comedian Sarah Silverman, asserting that their works were used without permission. The lawsuit highlights examples of OpenAI's GPT-4 generating extensive portions of Times' articles, including a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation, and Bing Chat (now Copilot) producing verbatim excerpts from Times articles.
While acknowledging the threat posed by chatbots, experts suggest that addressing the issue comprehensively will be challenging due to the widespread use of similar language models.
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