Eight U.S. newspaper publishers have taken legal action against Microsoft and OpenAI in a New York federal court. The publishers are claiming that these technology companies are using their articles without permission in generative artificial intelligence products and improperly attributing inaccurate information to them.
The lawsuit specifically targets ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot assistant, which are integrated into various products like the Windows operating system and Bing search engine. The publishers allege that these AI tools are extracting millions of copyrighted articles without proper authorization or compensation.
The group of publishers includes well-known names such as the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, and The Denver Post, among others. They argue that OpenAI has been training its language models, GPT-2 and GPT-3, on datasets that contain text from their newspapers, leading to the generation of verbatim copies of their works by the latest GPT-4 model.
Furthermore, the publishers claim that Microsoft leverages their content for its Bing search index, which fuels responses in the Copilot assistant. However, this process does not always redirect users to the original newspaper websites where they could engage with ads or subscribe to the publications.
Both Microsoft and OpenAI have yet to officially comment on the lawsuit. This legal battle follows a similar case where The New York Times sued OpenAI over copyright infringement related to the ChatGPT chatbot. OpenAI has denied the allegations and expressed its commitment to supporting a healthy news ecosystem.
In recent months, OpenAI has formed partnerships with media companies like Axel Springer and the Financial Times to enhance its AI models using their content. On the other hand, Google also reached an agreement with Reddit to train AI models on their platform’s content, highlighting the growing use of media data in AI development.
It is essential to monitor how this lawsuit unfolds and the implications it may have on the use of copyrighted content in AI technologies. As the debate over intellectual property rights and AI continues, striking a balance between innovation and respecting creators’ rights remains a key challenge in the tech industry.
For more insights into the situation, watch OpenAI CEO Sam Altman discuss the need for a comprehensive AI policy in the U.S.
