OpenAI Faces Sanctions from Major News Outlets Over Copyright Concerns
NEW YORK – A coalition of major media organizations, including The New York Times and the Daily News, has petitioned a federal judge to impose sanctions on OpenAI, intensifying an ongoing legal confrontation regarding artificial intelligence and copyright law that may redefine the trajectory of a troubled news landscape.
The newspapers assert that OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, is obstructing justice by concealing pivotal evidence vital to a potentially groundbreaking copyright infringement case.
This dispute centers around the methods employed by OpenAI and its partner Microsoft, to develop their AI technologies, which allegedly harness millions of published news articles.
The central contention is whether AI chatbots constitute an unfair competitor, diverting web traffic while eschewing the rigorous journalistic efforts necessary to produce news content.
A court filing on Thursday in Manhattan accuses OpenAI of “choosing obstruction” rather than disclosing datasets and ChatGPT usage logs that could clarify the extent to which copyrighted news material has been incorporated into its AI training regimen.
The plaintiffs have urged the judge to penalize the company for “discovery misconduct,” arguing that a recent testimony from an OpenAI employee contradicts previous assertions made by the firm.
Steven Lieberman, an attorney representing the New York Daily News, criticized OpenAI for “misrepresentations” regarding its capacity to identify copyrighted content within its AI training datasets for the past two years.
“This motion seeks to hold OpenAI accountable for the concealment and destruction of evidence demonstrating that ChatGPT was developed using appropriated journalism,” Lieberman stated, representing the Daily News and seven affiliated publications.
As of Thursday, OpenAI had not provided a response to the request for commentary.
The New York Times initiated legal action against OpenAI and Microsoft in late 2023, roughly a year after the launch of ChatGPT ignited a surge in commercial AI advancements, altering information retrieval practices online.
The threat to traditional news outlets became increasingly pronounced during 2024, when Google incorporated AI-generated summaries at the forefront of search results, consequently diminishing advertising revenues linked to original content clicks.
The Times has found allies in other news entities, including MediaNews Group-owned publications such as the Daily News and the Chicago Tribune, in addition to the digital publisher Ziff Davis and the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting.
OpenAI, along with other technology firms, maintains that the process of educating their AI systems on digitized literature, online articles, and other writings accessible via the internet falls under the protective umbrella of the “fair use” doctrine as stipulated by U.S. copyright law.
This legal premise is navigating scrutiny in multiple lawsuits as visual artists, novelists, music label companies, and other sectors face off against AI corporations, often with mixed outcomes.
In a notable case of copyright settlement, OpenAI competitor Anthropic consented to pay book authors $1.5 billion for training its Claude chatbot using unauthorized works — a sum that reflects merely a fragment of Anthropic’s projected $965 billion market valuation as it approaches public trading.
The New York Times’ legal arguments diverge from those posited by book authors. In its initial lawsuit and a recent amended filing, the Times highlights the unfair competition from enterprises that aim to capitalize on The Times’ substantial investment in quality journalism, using that content to create competing products devoid of permission or compensation.
To date, The Times has allocated over $28 million in legal fees confronting AI companies, as indicated by disclosures to financial regulators.
This expenditure includes another lawsuit launched against AI firm Perplexity last year. Among the sanctions being sought by the newspapers are attorney fees to cover the cost of obtaining “improperly withheld” evidence.
As financial burdens escalate, numerous media organizations are entering licensing agreements with OpenAI and other tech giants such as Google and Meta, which typically compensate publishers for the right to train AI systems using their news content or archives. The Associated Press was the first to announce such an agreement with OpenAI in 2023.
Source link: 9to5mac.com.
