Microsoft and OpenAI are being sued by the New York Times for copyright infringement, saying that the tech corporations allegedly applied “millions of articles” to train chatbots that currently pose a threat to journalists’ careers. . The companies are accused of causing “billions of dollars’ worth of damages,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit claimed that the businesses gave’millions of articles’ to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Bing Chat in violation of the law in order to create their products. It was filed on Wednesday in Federal District Court in Manhattan.
The complaint stated that the action aims to hold them accountable for the billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages they owe for the unauthorised use and duplication of The Times’s uniquely valuable works.
According to The Times, Microsoft’s and OpenAI’s artificial intelligence initiatives employ large-language models that were created by meticulously replicating their articles.
According to the lawsuit, “Defendants seek to build substitutive products without permission or payment, thereby free-riding on The Times’s massive investment in its journalism.”
The New York Times noted that the condition known as “hallucinations” caused by artificial intelligence, in which chatbots fabricate information and mistakenly ascribe it to a reliable source, could be detrimental to their reputation.
The Times reported that the corporations have found it very profitable to use their work, and that they have attempted to negotiate a fair share while assisting the companies in developing their technology, but have not been successful in coming to a consensus.
Microsoft’s market capitalization increased by $1 trillion in the last year alone thanks to the company’s use of Times-trained LLMs across its product range. Furthermore, the lawsuit claimed that OpenAI’s valuation increased to as much as $90 billion with the introduction of ChatGPT.
The Times filed a complaint, claiming that Microsoft and OpenAI had stated that their actions qualified as “fair use” as they were using the content for a novel, “transformative,” purpose.
“Using The Times’s content without payment to create products that substitute for The Times and steal audiences away from it” is not “transformative,” according to The Times.
This lawsuit, which might have significant legal ramifications, is the first of its kind from a major American media organisation against the makers of well-known artificial intelligence.
The parent firm of ChatGPT, which trains its chatbot to “ingest” books without permission, is accused by two best-selling novelists of breaking copyright rules in the first-ever complaint against OpenAI that was launched in July.
According to authors Mona Awad and Paul Tremblay, ChatGPT was taught by ‘taking’ a number of their novels, without their knowledge or permission.
Sarah Silverman, a comedian, and authors Richard Kadrey and Christopher Golden sued Meta Platforms and OpenAI shortly after, claiming that the companies had trained chatbots using copyrighted material.
