The New York Times sued Microsoft and OpenAI on Wednesday for utilizing its material to train its generative AI and large language model (LLM) systems.
The complaint was filed in federal court in Manhattan. According to the New York Times, Microsoft and OpenAI created their generative AI tools by “copying and using millions of The Times’s copyrighted news articles, in-depth investigations, opinion pieces, reviews, how-to guides, and more.”
According to the new publications, while the companies used information from several sources to train their LLM systems, “they gave Times content particular emphasis when building their LLMs” and that through Copilot and ChatGPT, Microsoft and OpenAI “seek to free-ride on The Times’s massive investment in its journalism by using it to build substitutive products without permission or payment.”
The Times also claims that ChatGPT and Copilot can “generate output that recites Times content verbatim, closely summarizes it, and mimics its expressive style”.
“Microsoft’s deployment of Times-trained LLMs throughout its product line helped boost its market capitalization by a trillion dollars in the past year alone. And OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT has driven its valuation to as high as $90 billion,” the lawsuit further reads.
The New York Times could possibly receive billions of dollars in damages for the said copyright infringement. “This action seeks to hold them responsible for the billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages that they owe for the unlawful copying and use of The Times’s uniquely valuable works. “
The news publisher claims that after discovering that its content was being used to train Microsoft and OpenAI’s gen AI tools, it “attempted to reach a negotiated agreement” with the companies in order “to permit the use of its content in new digital products.” “The Times’s goal during these negotiations was to ensure it received fair value for the use of its content, facilitate the continuation of a healthy news ecosystem, and help develop GenAI technology in a regenerative manner,” the news publisher says. According to The Times, Microsoft and OpenAI contended that the usage of the content was “fair use,” and the negotiation remained unresolved.
As per the lawsuit the “systematic and competitive infringement” has caused the news publishers to “suffer actual damages from the deprivation of the benefits of its work, such as, without limitation, lost advertising and affiliate referral revenue.”
This comes months after dozens of authors, including George R.R. Martin and John Grisham, sued OpenAI for using their work to train ChatGPT without permission. The authors alleged that ChatGPT was established by “massive theft on a large scale.” Only a few weeks ago, another group of authors had filed a lawsuit against OpenAI for “clear infringement of intellectual property.”
ChatGPT, a generative AI tool, has received a lot of attention since its release in November 2022. While it garnered a million users shortly after its inception, it witnessed significant growth in the user base in 2023. ChatGPT expanded by 9900% in January 2023, and it had an expected user traffic of 173 million in April 2023.
The platform will have had over 1.7 billion visitors by October 2023. The platform is very popular in India. In reality, India is the second-largest ChatGPT user, accounting for 8.18 percent of the user population. The United States has the biggest proportion of ChatGPT users (14.81%).
Stay Update with FELA NEWS!
