ChatGPT creator, OpenAI and Microsoft will engage in legal battle over ‘exploitative’ copyright infringement

The U.S. Center for Investigative Reporting has filed a lawsuit against ChatGPT creator OpenAI and Big Tech giant Microsoft, accusing them of copyright infringement by using its content to train artificial intelligence (AI) platforms.

The nonprofit said OpenAI used its content without permission and without offering compensation, violating the copyright of the organization’s journalism.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in New York, describes OpenAI’s business as “based on the exploitation of copyrighted works” and focuses on how AI-generated article summaries threaten publishers.

The lawsuit against OpenAI claims that the company admitted to creating an earlier version of its chatbot technology using thousands of links to Mother Jones, one of the publications run by CIR.

The lawsuit continued: AI training text often omitted information about the story’s author, title or copyright.

Losing control over copyrighted content, the lawsuit continued, will result in less revenue for high-cost investigative journalism and even fewer reporters telling important stories in “today’s bleak media landscape.”

“It’s extremely dangerous,” Monika Bauerlein, CEO of the nonprofit organization, told The Associated Press.

“Our existence depends on users finding our work valuable and choosing to support it.”

OpenAI faces numerous lawsuits

Bauerlein said that “when humans can no longer develop a relationship with our work… then their relationship begins with the AI ​​tool.”

She said it could “undermine the foundations of our existence as an independent newsroom” and at the same time threaten other news organizations.

OpenAI and Microsoft are facing other copyright lawsuits from The New York Times, other media outlets, and bestselling authors such as John Grisham, Jodi Picoult, and George RR Martin.

Another case in federal court in San Francisco is being argued by authors including comedian Sarah Silverman.

Instead of fighting, other news organizations have chosen to cooperate, signing agreements with OpenAI to be paid for providing news content that can be used to train large language model (LLM) systems.

On Thursday, Time announced that OpenAI will gain access to its “extensive archives spanning the past 101 years.”

OpenAI did not respond directly to the lawsuit, but said in a statement that it “works with the news industry and partners with global news publishers to display their content in our products like ChatGPT, including summaries, quotes, and attributions to drive traffic back to the original articles.”

Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment.

OpenAI and other major AI developers typically do not disclose their data sources, but they argue that using publicly available text, images and other media to train their AI systems is protected by the “fair use” doctrine of US copyright law.