All the news that’s fit to print — or isn’t.ChatGPT has been mainstream for barely a year and already its stirring up a legal hornet’s nest in traditional publishing circles after the New York Times on Wednesday filed a federal lawsuit against parent OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement.In a suit filed in Manhattan federal court, America’s nation newspaper of record — the ‘Gray Lady’ — alleges “unlawful use of The Times’s work to create artificial intelligence products that competes with it… and threatens The Times’s ability to provide that service.”.That’s because AI uses language models to train chatbots to think in human terms. In turn they scrape the internet for almost every scrap of available online information — including media articles — to develop those models.The suit is alleging that OpenAI is seeking to “free-ride” 172 years of its articles to program alternative news services. In the suit, the newspaper said it wants to “ensure it received fair value” for the use of its content in order to “facilitate the continuation of a healthy news ecosystem, and help develop GenAI technology in a responsible way that benefits society and supports a well-informed public.”If it is upheld, the copyright infringements could be worth “billions of dollars” in damages. OpenAI and Microsoft didn’t immediately respond..The development is significant because AI companies have attracted hundreds of billions in investment dollars — Microsoft has sunk more than USD$10 billion in OpenAI alone. Traditional news media is just the first of any number of traditional industries like legal and medicine that could be impacted. Photography is widely considered to be the next on tap.In June more than 4,000 writers signed a letter to the CEOs of OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Meta and other AI developers accusing them of exploitative practices in building chatbots that “mimic and regurgitate” their language, style and ideas.Last week the NYT itself announced Apple was in negotiations with several publishers, including Condé Nast, NBC and even the Times itself to licence their news archives to train its own generative AI systems.But the publishers are concerned about “potentially being on the hook for any legal liabilities” that could stem from Apple’s use of their content. Apple is reportedly spending “millions of dollars a day” to catch up to rivals like Microsoft and Google.
All the news that’s fit to print — or isn’t.ChatGPT has been mainstream for barely a year and already its stirring up a legal hornet’s nest in traditional publishing circles after the New York Times on Wednesday filed a federal lawsuit against parent OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement.In a suit filed in Manhattan federal court, America’s nation newspaper of record — the ‘Gray Lady’ — alleges “unlawful use of The Times’s work to create artificial intelligence products that competes with it… and threatens The Times’s ability to provide that service.”.That’s because AI uses language models to train chatbots to think in human terms. In turn they scrape the internet for almost every scrap of available online information — including media articles — to develop those models.The suit is alleging that OpenAI is seeking to “free-ride” 172 years of its articles to program alternative news services. In the suit, the newspaper said it wants to “ensure it received fair value” for the use of its content in order to “facilitate the continuation of a healthy news ecosystem, and help develop GenAI technology in a responsible way that benefits society and supports a well-informed public.”If it is upheld, the copyright infringements could be worth “billions of dollars” in damages. OpenAI and Microsoft didn’t immediately respond..The development is significant because AI companies have attracted hundreds of billions in investment dollars — Microsoft has sunk more than USD$10 billion in OpenAI alone. Traditional news media is just the first of any number of traditional industries like legal and medicine that could be impacted. Photography is widely considered to be the next on tap.In June more than 4,000 writers signed a letter to the CEOs of OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Meta and other AI developers accusing them of exploitative practices in building chatbots that “mimic and regurgitate” their language, style and ideas.Last week the NYT itself announced Apple was in negotiations with several publishers, including Condé Nast, NBC and even the Times itself to licence their news archives to train its own generative AI systems.But the publishers are concerned about “potentially being on the hook for any legal liabilities” that could stem from Apple’s use of their content. Apple is reportedly spending “millions of dollars a day” to catch up to rivals like Microsoft and Google.
