The New York Times filed a federal copyright infringement lawsuit against ChatGPT creator OpenAI and its main backer Microsoft on Wednesday, kicking off a legal battle that could limit the emerging technology as publishers struggle for survival.
The lawsuit, which was filed in Manhattan district court, claims that OpenAI and Microsoft used “millions” of copyrighted articles to create artificial intelligence products that compete with and threaten the Gray Lady’s ability to provide that service.
“Through Microsoft’s Bing Chat (recently rebranded as “Copilot”) and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, defendants 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 asserts.
New York Times sues Openai over alleged copyright infringement
The Times’ lawsuit is the first by a major media organization against OpenAI and Microsoft, and it requests that the court order the “destruction” of all GPT and “large-language models” trained using its work.
The New York Times “seeks to hold them responsible for the billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages,” the complaint said.
The Post’s request for comment on the lawsuit was not immediately returned by OpenAI or Microsoft.
According to the complaint, OpenAI and Microsoft’s AI products used proprietary articles in their responses and diverted traffic that would otherwise go to the Times’ web properties, costing the company advertising, licensing, and subscription revenue.
“New York Times journalism is the work of thousands of journalists, whose employment costs hundreds of millions of dollars per year,” the Times said in its complaint. “Defendants have effectively avoided spending the billions of dollars that The Times invested in creating that work by taking it without permission or compensation.”
While OpenAI’s parent company is a non-profit, Microsoft has invested $13 billion in a for-profit subsidiary for a 49% stake.
OpenAI has been valued by investors at more than $80 billion.
According to the New York Times, the suit was filed after months of negotiations between the companies failed to produce a deal.
Others have complained about OpenAI’s alleged infringement on their intellectual property.
Novelists such as David Baldacci, Jonathan Franzen, John Grisham, and Scott Turow have also sued OpenAI and Microsoft in the Manhattan court, claiming that AI systems might have co-opted tens of thousands of their books.
