The New York Times Sues Open AI and Its Backer Microsoft for Copyright Infringement; Said platform wants to use expensive journalism as a “free rider” for “substitute products.”

In a potentially game-changing case: The New York Times has sued Open AI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, saying the publication’s content is being misused by the platform to power automated chatbots, amounting to “illegal copying and use of The Times’ uniquely valuable works.”

“The defendants are attempting to exploit the Times’ massive investment in journalism by producing substitute products without permission or payment,” the report said.

This is the first time a major media company has sued an AI platform, although there are a handful of ongoing cases filed by IP owners ranging from Sarah Silverman to John Grisham and Getty Images.

The lawsuit, filed today in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York ( read here ), states that Open AI and its backer Microsoft are liable for “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages” as well as chatbot and training models any material used in the production of The Times’ copyright material must be destroyed.

The Times’ work “is made possible by the efforts of a large and expensive organization that provides legal, security and operational support, as well as editors who ensure that their journalism meets the highest standards of accuracy and fairness,” the court in the event. . “Defendants’ unlawful use of the Times’ work to develop artificial intelligence products that compete with it jeopardizes the Times’ ability to provide this service.”

AI tools based on key language models (so-called LLMs) “were developed by copying and using millions of copyrighted Times news articles, in-depth investigations, op-eds, reviews, guides and more.” copies from many sources, they placed particular emphasis on the content of The Times when preparing their LLMs.

Generative AI, a growing and well-funded field led by Microsoft’s Open AI, trains chatbots with large amounts of data. The lawsuit says the platform is “using the Times’ content without compensation to develop products that replace the Times and take away its audience.”

The Authors Guild, John Grisham, George RR Martin, Michael Connelly, Jodi Picoult and a group of other famous novelists filed a class action lawsuit against OpenAI, claiming that their technology infringes their works.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon and Tony-winning playwright David Henry Hwang are among another group of authors who have filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court against Meta for “copying and incorporating” their works to use the LLaMA AI -platform to train.

In this case, it is training data for AI software programs designed to create compelling natural texts in response to user input. They are trained, the lawsuit says, “by copying enormous amounts of text and extracting expressive information from it.” The text is referred to as a training data set,” the lawsuit states. The plaintiffs own copyright to their books and written works “and never consented to their use as training material for LLaMA” – Facebook parent company Meta’s AI platform.

In July, Sarah Silverman and two other authors sued OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement.

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