Why is the New York Times suing OpenAI and Microsoft?

Artificial intelligence, which was once hailed by many to revolutionise many industries, including media, is now making headlines for all wrong reasons. A growing list of individuals and publishers are trying to stop OpenAI from using copyrighted material. And now, The New York Times has joined the group. On Wednesday, the American daily filed a federal lawsuit against ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Microsoft in a US court, alleging that the companies’ powerful AI models used millions of articles for training without permission. Through their AI chatbots, the companies “seek to free-ride on The Times’ massive investment in its journalism by using it to build substitutive products without permission or payment,” the lawsuit said. With the suit, The New York Times chose a more confrontational approach to the sudden rise of AI chatbots, in contrast to other media groups such as Germany’s Axel Springer or the Associated Press that have entered content deals with OpenAI. What is The New York Times seeking? The Times, one of the most respected news organisations in the US, is seeking damages, as well as an order that the companies stop using its content — and destroy data already harvested. While no sum is specifically requested, the Times alleges that the infringement could have cost “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages”. Microsoft, the world’s second biggest company by market capitalisation, is a major investor in OpenAI, and swiftly implemented the powers of AI to its own products after the release of ChatGPT last year. The AI models that power ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot (formerly Bing) were trained for years on content available on the internet, under the assumption that it was fair to be used without need for compensation. But the lawsuit, filed in a federal court in New York, argued that the unlawful use of the Times’ work to build artificial intelligence products created a potential rival and threatened its ability to provide quality journalism. “These tools were built with and continue to use independent journalism and content that is only available because we and our peers reported, edited, and fact-checked it at high cost and with considerable expertise,” a spokesperson for the Times said. [caption id=“attachment_13552472” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] The Times, one of the most respected news organisations in the US, is seeking damages, as well as an order that the companies stop using its content — and destroy data already harvested. AP[/caption] The Times said it attempted to seal a content agreement with OpenAI and Microsoft, but that the companies maintained that their technology was “transformative” and therefore did not need a commercial arrangement. The lawsuit said content generated by ChatGPT and Copilot closely mimicked New York Times style and that the paper’s content was given a privileged status in perfecting the chatbot technology. It also said content that proved to be false was sourced incorrectly to The New York Times. “There is nothing ‘transformative’ about using The Times’ content without payment to create products that substitute for The Times and steal audiences away from it,” the lawsuit alleged. Why is the New York Times so concerned? The media has already been hit by a shift in readership to online outlets. While several publications, most notably the New York Times, have successfully carved out a digital space, the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) threatens to significantly disrupt the publishing industry. Web traffic contributes significantly to the paper’s advertising revenue and helps boost subscriptions to its online site. However, the outputs of AI chatbots, according to the Times, divert that traffic away from the paper and other copyright holders, making it less likely that consumers will visit the original source for the content, reports Times Now. “These bots compete with the content they are trained on,” said Ian B Crosby, a partner and lead counsel at Susman Godfrey, which represents The Times. The Times claims that these companies are jeopardising its livelihood by basically stealing billions of dollars’ worth of labour by its journalists, in some cases spitting out Times’ information verbatim to those seeking answers from generative artificial intelligence like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday, cited instances of OpenAI’s GPT-4 spitting out huge chunks of Times articles, including a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into New York City’s taxi sector that took 18 months to finish. It also highlighted Bing Chat outputs, now known as Copilot, which featured verbatim extracts from Times articles. The complaint was filed in federal court in Manhattan following what appears to be a breakdown in negotiations between the newspaper and the two firms, which began in April. What OpenAI is saying? In a statement, an OpenAI spokeswoman stated that the business respects content producers’ rights and is committed to collaborating with them to help them profit from the technology and new income models. “Our ongoing conversations with the New York Times have been productive and moving forward constructively, so we are surprised and disappointed with this development,” said a spokeswoman for the company, as reported by Times Now. “We’re hopeful that we will find a mutually beneficial way to work together, as we are doing with many other publishers,” she added. [caption id=“attachment_13552482” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] The complaint was filed in federal court in Manhattan following what appears to be a breakdown in negotiations between the newspaper and the two firms, which began in April. AP[/caption] Microsoft has yet to respond to the situation. The tech giant has a partnership with OpenAI, which allows it to capitalise on the company’s AI technology. In response, Microsoft’s supercomputers help power OpenAI’s AI research and the tech giant integrates the startup’s technology into its products, as per their agreement, as reported by Times Now. What are the other cases involving AI? The emerging AI giants are facing a wave of lawsuits over their use of internet content to build their AI systems that create content on simple prompts. A number of writers, notably comedian Sarah Silverman, have sued the business, alleging that their works were used to train OpenAI’s AI models without their permission. More than 4,000 writers signed a letter in June accusing the CEOs of OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Meta, and other AI developers of exploitative methods in constructing chatbots that “mimic and regurgitate” their language, style, and ideas. Last year, Game of Thrones author George RR Martin and other best-selling fiction writers filed a class-action lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the startup of violating their copyrights to fuel ChatGPT. Universal and other music publishers have sued artificial intelligence company Anthropic in a US court for using copyrighted lyrics to train its AI systems and in generating answers to user queries. US photo distributor Getty Images has accused Stability AI of profiting from its pictures and those of its partners in order to make visual AI that creates original images on simple demand. With lawsuits piling up, Microsoft and AI player Google have announced they would provide legal protection for customers sued for copyright infringement over content generated by its AI. What happens next? Different stakeholders recognise that technology has the potential to disrupt their entire business model, but the challenge is how to adapt to it, according to Sarah Kreps, director of Cornell University’s Tech Policy Institute. Kreps agreed that these chatbots pose a threat to The New York Times. However, she also stated that truly resolving the issue would be a difficult task. “There’s so many other language models out there that are doing the same thing,” she told Times Now. The News/Media Alliance, a trade group representing over 2,200 news organisations, praised the Times’ decision on Wednesday. “Quality journalism and GenAI can complement each other if approached collaboratively,” alliance president and CEO Danielle Coffey stated. “But using journalism without permission or payment is unlawful, and certainly not fair use.” With inputs from AP and AFP