Crisis in the media and publishing industry? New York Times sues OpenAI and Microsoft for massive copyright infringement

According to The New York Times, The New York Times has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft and the developers of ChatGPT, OpenAI, on Wednesday, accusing the two companies of copyright infringement for using the newspaper's articles to train their AI models without authorization, causing damage to its reputation, operations, and profitability. OpenAI responded that this was "fair use," however, it seems that the company has been sued before.

The New York Times Sues Microsoft and OpenAI

The New York Times filed a lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI in the Southern District of New York, accusing the two companies of training their chatbots using millions of articles from the plaintiff, which they claim infringes on copyright and has caused damage to their reputation and revenue.

The court documents state that The New York Times operates on a subscription basis and alleges that the companies copied and used millions of news articles and investigative content without permission, providing them for free to users:

OpenAI knew the impact and power of generative AI on the public and the news media industry. However, news materials should only be used for commercial purposes with the permission of the original source.

The newspaper also cited examples where OpenAI and Microsoft's chatbots provided users with verbatim excerpts almost identical to their articles:

From the award-winning series on exploitative loans in the New York City taxi industry in 2019, to restaurant critic Pete Wells' review of a now-closed American restaurant in 2012, the latter of which went viral.

Potential Damages Could Reach Billions of Dollars

In addition to the lawsuit, The New York Times seeks for OpenAI and Microsoft to delete chatbot models containing their content and added:

These works are built on independent news and content, which are only obtained after costly reporting, editing, and fact-checking by us.

Reuters speculates that although The New York Times is not seeking damages, if the plaintiff is successful, the estimated damages for OpenAI and Microsoft could reach billions of dollars.

OpenAI and Microsoft Respond: Claiming "Fair Use"

In response, Microsoft and OpenAI stated through Reuters:

Using copyrighted works to train AI products falls under "fair use," and we are disappointed with the outcome of the failed settlement negotiations.

However, the U.S. Copyright Office website indicates that "fair use" requires adding something new or with a different purpose or character to the original content.

The Times also criticized:

Using content from paid newspapers and magazines without payment, even for one's own product, to substitute for The Times, absorb and divert readers, is not considered "fair use."

The same report revealed that OpenAI had previously been sued by comedian Sarah Silverman and the American Authors Guild in July and September respectively, for allegedly extracting their book works without permission for use in their language models.

However, most of Sarah's claims were dismissed by a judge last month.

Media and Publishing Industry Facing Crisis

It is understood that The Times and The Times of London are two international media companies dedicated to preventing AI companies from illegally infringing copyrights. As of November, the former had 94.1 million digital subscribers, while the latter had 101 million.

With the emergence of AI technologies such as ChatGPT and Midjourney, the media and publishing industries have been continuously impacted as their content may be transformed by these tools to produce similar content to the original data.

CNBC expresses concern that such infringements could adversely affect the quality of news reporting, potentially diverting readership that would have otherwise gone to The Times' website and leading readers to misattribute data from ChatGPT to the newspaper itself.

These two potential concerns directly affect the advertising and subscription revenue of the media and publishing industries, putting their reputation and operations in crisis.

The Times and The Times of London claim to be among the first victims of this issue.