The newspaper ‘The New York Times‘sued this Wednesday OpenAI and Microsoft from Copyright infringement against the unauthorized use of published works for Train artificial intelligence (AI) technologies..
The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, New York, USA, alleges that millions of articles published by The New York Times were habituated Train automated chatbots which now compete with the media as a source of information.
Although the lawsuit does not specify the amount of monetary damages, it states that the defendants should be held liable for “billion dollars as to legal and actual damages” related to the “unlawful reproduction and use of the Times’ exceptionally valuable works.”
Companies must also destroy any chatbot models and training data that use the newspaper’s copyrighted material. According to The New York Times, Microsoft declined to comment on the matter, while OpenAI has no comment at this time.
Investors currently value OpenAI more than 80 billion dollars (71.9 million euros). In the case of Microsoft, they made a commitment 13 billion dollars (11.6 million euros) for OpenAI and has integrated the company’s technology into its Bing search engine.
“The defendants They are trying to take advantage of the Times’ huge investment in its journalism” the lawsuit says, accusing OpenAI and Microsoft of “using unpaid Times content to create products that replace the Times and steal audiences.”
They sought a “friendly solution” to the conflict
In its complaint, the newspaper details that it contacted Microsoft and OpenAI last April to raise concerns about the use of their intellectual property and to investigate “a.” friendly solution“, but that the talks did not lead to an agreement.
In addition to aiming to protect intellectual property, the lawsuit portrays ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence systems as “potential competitors in the news business“The newspaper therefore expresses concern that readers will be satisfied with a chatbot response and refuse to visit The New York Times website, thereby reducing web traffic that can translate into advertising and subscription revenue.”
The complaint cites several examples in which a chatbot provided users with near-verbatim excerpts from newspaper articles that would otherwise require a subscription to read. One of these examples comes from Browse with Binga Microsoft search function powered by ChatGPT that reproduced the results from Wirecutter, the New York Times product review site, almost verbatim.
However, it comes to Bing text You didn’t link to the Wirecutter article and removed in-text referral links that Wirecutter uses to generate sales commissions based on its recommendations, the lawsuit continues. “Decreased traffic to Wirecutter articles and, in turn, reduced traffic to affiliate links subsequently resulted in lost sales for Wirecutter,” the complaint details.
The lawsuit also highlights:the possible damage“to The New York Times brand through so-called AI ‘hallucinations,’ a phenomenon in which ‘chatbots’ insert false information that is then incorrectly attributed to a source. The complaint cites several instances in which Microsoft’s Bing Chat made false statements.” The information allegedly came from the newspaper, including results for “the 15 most heart-healthy foods,” 12 of which were not mentioned in a newspaper article.
“If The New York Times and other news organizations cannot produce and protect their independent journalism, A gap will arise that neither a computer nor artificial intelligence can fill“continues the complaint, warning: “Less journalism will be produced and the costs to society will be enormous.”
The newspaper has hired law firm Susman Godfrey as lead outside counsel for the litigation. Godfrey represented Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation case against Fox News, which resulted in a settlement $787.5 million (around 707 million euros) last April. The company also filed a proposed class action lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI last month on behalf of several nonfiction authors whose books and copyrighted materials were used to train the companies’ chatbots.