New York Times Joins Long List of Suits Against OpenAI and Microsoft as Copyright Infringement Battle Rages On

In a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday in Manhattan federal court, the New York Times asserts claims against OpenAI and Microsoft in an effort to stop them from using New York Times articles to train their chatbots. This new lawsuit is the next installment in a long line of cases brought by authors and writers of content claiming the use of their copyrighted material to train AI chatbots constitutes copyright infringement. Specifically, the Times complains of 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.” 

Several Copyright Infringement Lawsuits Are Pending by Copyright Owners Related to Chatbot Learning

The Times is only the latest in a number of copyright infringement cases filed against OpenAI and others, including a suit brought by writers Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad in San Francisco in June of this year.  A second suit quickly followed in July, filed by comedian Sarah Silverman and two writers, Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey. Two more were filed in September—one by Michael Chabon (author of the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay) and fellow writers David Henry Hwang, Rachel Louis Snyder, and Ayelet Waldman, and a second brought in the Southern District of New York by high profile authors John Grisham, George A. A. Martin, Jodi Picoult, Jonathan Franzer, Elin Hilderbrand and twelve other writers.

AI programs (or chatbots) such as ChatGPT respond to user prompts by application of an algorithm that selects words based on “training” the chatbots received from scanning billions of pieces of text across the Internet. The primary argument in each of these lawsuits involves the alleged illegal use of copyrighted content to train the AI programs, an act each set of plaintiffs maintains is an unauthorized reproduction of the copyrighted works in violation of the Copyright Act of 1976 (17 U.S.C. § 501, et seq.). Thus, the plaintiffs allege, OpenAI, (and others creating and “training” chatbots) scan and make use of the copyrighted material, which creates or fosters written work that publishers would otherwise pay authors to generate.  Microsoft’s involvement in the latest lawsuit comes from its partnership with OpenAI, including its ongoing investment of billions of dollars into the company since the partnership began in 2019 with a $1 billion investment.

NY Times Sues OpenAI Claiming Unauthorized Verbatim Recitations

The lawsuit filed by the Times claims that OpenAI’s generative AI tools are closely summarizing millions of articles from the Times in a way that mimics its style and even recites content verbatim. The complaint includes examples of OpenAI’s GPT-4 regurgitating large portions of news articles from the Times, including a 2019 Pulitzer-Prize winning investigation into New York City’s taxi industry that took 18 months to come to publication. It also references content from Bing Chat that the Times maintains includes verbatim excerpts from previous Times articles.

This past July, OpenAI and The Associated Press announced a deal for the artificial intelligence company to license AP’s archive of news stories. While it appears the Times and OpenAI held similar conversations, no deal was reached, resulting in the filing of today’s lawsuit. While the outcome of each of these many lawsuits remains unclear, there can be no doubt that the ultimate result in each will have long-term impacts on the state of copyright law in the U.S. and its application to the ever-changing landscape of Artificial Intelligence.

Key Takeaways in Latest AI Lawsuit: NY Times Sues OpenAI for Copyright Infringement

OpenAI, ChatGPT and others “train” their chatbots to learn information by scanning billions of pieces of text across the Internet causing copyright owners to sue because:

• The copyrighted works are being “learned” and then disseminated by chatbots in answers to questions posed;

• The copyrighted works being “learned” by the chatbots were not licensed or otherwise authorized for such use; and

• Copyright owners claim chatbots are making use of their copyrighted material and creating written work that publishers would otherwise pay the copyright owners to generate.

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