The New York Times initiated legal action against OpenAI and Microsoft on Wednesday, alleging that a substantial number of copyrighted papers were improperly utilized to train advanced artificial intelligence models, resulting in potential damages amounting to billions of dollars.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York, claims that the technology powering ChatGPT and Bing Chat (formerly Copilot) by OpenAI and Microsoft can generate content that closely resembles The Times’ material in both wording and emotional tone.
Despite the significant profitability of these AI tools for the tech companies, The Times contends that they have a detrimental impact on its relationship with readers and financial revenue streams such as subscriptions, licensing, and advertising.
Efforts to reach a mutually beneficial agreement between The Times, OpenAI, and Microsoft regarding content usage, including the responsible development of GenAI technology for societal benefit, have reportedly been ongoing for some time.
The lawsuit aims to make OpenAI and Microsoft accountable for the financial and legal ramifications resulting from the alleged copyright infringement, although the precise amount of damages sought has not been specified.
Requests for comments from OpenAI and Microsoft were not immediately responded to following the lawsuit filing.
In related history, The Authors Guild, representing prominent authors like Jodi Picoult and George R. Martin, previously lodged a complaint accusing the creator of ChatGPT of unauthorized use of their literary works. The legal action by The Times follows similar complaints by authors and developers against OpenAI, Microsoft, and other AI firms for copyright violations.
OpenAI reportedly engaged in constructive dialogues with authors worldwide, including The Authors Guild, as part of addressing concerns raised in previous legal disputes. A separate class action lawsuit in November involved fiction writers alleging unauthorized utilization of their works by OpenAI and Microsoft to train AI models, purportedly involving tens of thousands of books without proper consent.
