In a legal move on Wednesday, The New York Times initiated a lawsuit against OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, and Microsoft, alleging unauthorized use of millions of articles in the training of their powerful AI models. The lawsuit contends that both companies exploited The Times’ journalistic content to develop AI products without proper authorization or compensation.
The legal action taken by The New York Times represents a confrontational stance in response to the growing prominence of AI chatbots. This differs from the approach adopted by other media entities like Germany’s Axel Springer and the Associated Press, which have opted for content deals with OpenAI.
As one of the United States’ most esteemed news organizations, The Times is not only seeking damages but also requesting a court order to cease the use of its content and to compel the destruction of any already harvested data.
Microsoft, a significant investor in OpenAI, swiftly incorporated AI capabilities into its products following the release of ChatGPT last year. The AI models powering ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot (formerly Bing) underwent years of training on internet-available content, operating under the assumption that such usage was fair and did not require compensation.
However, The Times argues in the lawsuit that the unauthorized utilization of its content poses a threat to its capacity to deliver high-quality journalism. The newspaper emphasizes that the tools developed by OpenAI and Microsoft rely on independent journalism and content, which is only accessible due to the substantial investments made by The Times and its peers in reporting, editing, and fact-checking.
