New York Times sues OpenAI, Microsoft for infringing copyrighted works
Al Jazeera
The US-based newspaper accuses the companies of using millions of its articles without permission to help train chatbots.
The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft over copyright infringement, seeking to end the companies’ practice of using its stories to train chatbots.
The newspaper filed a lawsuit in the United States federal court in Manhattan on Wednesday, alleging the companies’ powerful artificial intelligence (AI) models used millions of its articles for training without permission and saying that copyright infringements at the paper alone could be worth billions.
The Times said OpenAI and Microsoft are advancing their technology through the “unlawful use of The Times’s work to create artificial intelligence products that compete with it” and “threatens The Times’s ability to provide that service”.
Through their AI chatbots, the companies “seek to free-ride on The Times’s massive investment in its journalism by using it to build substitutive products without permission or payment”, the lawsuit said.
The Times, one of the most respected news organisations in the United States, is seeking damages as well as an order that the companies stop using its content – and destroy data already harvested.
