The New York Times has embarked on a legal crusade against OpenAI and Microsoft, the architects behind the renowned AI platforms like ChatGPT, alleging significant copyright infringements and attributing “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages” to their actions.
This legal challenge, filed in the Federal District Court of Manhattan on Wednesday, refrains from specifying a precise compensation figure but claims Microsoft and OpenAI are accountable for extensive financial damages. The lawsuit also seeks the dismantling of any AI models and associated datasets that incorporate copyrighted material from The Times.
According to the suit, OpenAI and Microsoft are accused of extensively utilizing The Times’ proprietary works to train their GPT models and are charged with systematically duplicating this vast array of copyrighted content from The Times without any form of compensation or licensing agreement.
The suit details that in an effort to train the GPT models, the two tech giants developed a sophisticated, specialized supercomputing infrastructure designed specifically to store and reproduce the training data, which included content owned by The Times. The suit alleges that “Innumerable works from The Times were replicated and integrated—repeatedly—for the purpose of refining the Defendants’ GPT models.”
At the time of the filing, neither Microsoft nor OpenAI had provided comments regarding the allegations.
This lawsuit represents a groundbreaking moment as it is the first major instance of a leading U.S. media corporation legally confronting OpenAI and Microsoft over the copyright infringement of its written material.
The lawsuit emphasizes the critical nature of protecting The Times’s intellectual property to ensure its continued dedication to producing top-tier journalism that serves the public interest. It argues that without the ability to control their content’s usage, media outlets like The Times will face diminished revenue, leading to a significant reduction in the depth and breadth of journalistic endeavors. This potential decline in journalism, the lawsuit warns, could have far-reaching and detrimental societal impacts.
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