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New York Times sues OpenAI, Microsoft for seeking to ‘free-ride’ on its articles to train chatbots

The New York Times on Wednesday slapped ChatGPT creator OpenAI and its chief backer, Microsoft, with a federal copyright infringement lawsuit — setting up a legal battle that could rein in the emerging technology as publishers fight for survival.

Filed in Manhattan district court, the lawsuit alleges 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.

The Times’ lawsuit — the first by a major media organization against OpenAI and Microsoft — is seeking unspecified damages and wants the court to order the “destruction” of all GPT and “large-language models” that were trained using its work.

The newspaper “seeks to hold them responsible for the billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages,” the complaint said.

OpenAI and Microsoft have said using copyrighted works to train AI products amounts to “fair use.”

The Times’ lawsuit is the first by a major media organization against OpenAI and Microsoft. AP

“We respect the rights of content creators and owners and are committed to working with them to ensure they benefit from AI technology and new revenue models,” an OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement. “Our ongoing conversations with the New York Times have been productive and moving forward constructively, so we are surprised and disappointed with this development. We’re hopeful that we will find a mutually beneficial way to work together, as we are doing with many other publishers.”

Microsoft did not immediately return The Post’s request for comment.

A New York Times spokesperson said the AI chatbots 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.”

“Settled copyright law protects our journalism and content. If Microsoft and OpenAI want to use our work for commercial purposes, the law requires that they first obtain our permission,” the spokesperson said in a statement to The Post. “They have not done so.”

The Times’ legal team cited multiple examples in which ChatGPT regurgitated from its articles and those by Wirecutter, the outlet’s product review site, “verbatim.” 

The AI tool provided verbatim text of a 2012 article titled “Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek.” US District Court

In one instance highlighted in the suit, ChatGPT delivered a line-by-line copy of the New York Times’ scathing 2012 review of Guy Fieri’s American Kitchen & Bar restaurant.

Another example claimed that after a ChatGPT user complained about the Times’ paywall preventing them from reading a 2012 article titled “Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek” that won the Pulitzer Prize, the AI tool provided verbatim text from the piece.

Passages from investigative reports about Apple’s business practices and the New York City taxi industry were also allegedly copied word for word by ChatGPT.

In one instance highlighted in the suit, ChatGPT delivered a line-by-line copy of the New York Times’ scathing 2012 review of Guy Fieri’s American Kitchen & Bar restaurant. US District Court
The New York Times’ lawsuit also marks a fresh headache for OpenAI boss Sam Altman. Getty Images for TIME

In many instances, the replies by ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Browse with Bing AI tool failed to provide links to the original article, the complaint alleged.

“Decreased traffic to Wirecutter articles and, in turn, decreased traffic to affiliate links subsequently lead to a loss of revenue for Wirecutter,” the complaint states.

Also troubling, according to the complaint, were instances in which ChatGPT “hallucinated,” or spat out inaccurate information that it wrongly attributed to the Times — jeopardizing the integrity of publisher AG Sulzberger’s 172-year-old publication. OpenAI and its chief rival Google have each admitted that their chatbots are prone to hallucinations.

When Microsoft’s AI-powered Bing Chat was asked to recommend the best available office chair, the chatbot allegedly ripped off four products detailed in an article by Wirecutter.

When Microsoft’s AI-powered Bing Chat was asked to recommend the best available office chair, the chatbot allegedly ripped off four products detailed in an article by Wirecutter. US District Court

The chatbot also claimed that Wirecutter recommended the “La-Z-Boy Trafford Big & Tall Executive Chair” and the “Fully Balans Chair” — even though neither item appeared in the original article.

“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 is a nonprofit company, Microsoft has invested $13 billion in a for-profit subsidiary. 

OpenAI is expected to be valued at more than $80 billion at the conclusion of a hotly anticipated share sale.

The suit was lodged after months of negotiations between the companies failed to produce a deal, according to the Times.

Also troubling, according to the complaint, were instances in which ChatGPT “hallucinated,” or spat out inaccurate information that it wrongly attributed to the Times — jeopardizing the integrity of publisher AG Sulzberger’s publication. Getty Images

It is the latest sign of growing backlash from media outlets, authors and other creatives as tech giants use endless reams of internet data to “train” their AI models. Critics fear that the rise of chatbots and other AI tools will further erode revenue within the struggling journalism sector — or even render creative fields obsolete.

In September, a coalition of authors including “Game of Thrones” creator George R.R. Martin, Jodi Picoult and John Grisham sued OpenAI for allegedly using their copyrighted works without permission. Their suit alleged that the “success and profitability of OpenAI are predicated on mass copyright infringement.”

Elsewhere, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson noted in November that The Post’s and the Wall Street Journal’s parent company has “led the quest for compensation for content from the big digital platforms” over the last decade and has “entered a new phase of negotiations with the rise of Generative AI.”

Thomson had previously called out OpenAI’s ChatGPT for exhibiting a left-wing bias and slammed the chatbot’s tendency to spit out gibberish as “rubbish in, rubbish out, rubbish all about.”

Billionaire mogul Barry Diller, the chairman of Dotdash Meredith’s parent company IAC, told Semafor earlier this year that he believes media companies should band together and sue tech giants for using their content to train AI models.

The New York Times asked a federal court to hold Microsoft and OpenAI “responsible” for billions in damages. REUTERS

Diller reportedly approached the New York Times to participate in that offer, but the Gray Lady opted not to take him up on it.

The New York Times’ lawsuit also marks a fresh headache for OpenAI boss Sam Altman, who is still smarting from a high-profile spat that led the AI firm’s previous board of directors to fire him last month.

Altman later returned to his post after frantic negotiations that included the departure of all but one of OpenAI’s previous board directors.

The exact reasons for his exit have not been publicly revealed, but a report earlier this month said that senior OpenAI employees had allegedly complained behind the scenes that Altman was “psychologically abusive.”