On Monday, OpenAI responded to the New York Times lawsuit, stating that it considered the legal action to be “without merit”. OpenAI also emphasized its commitment to supporting and generating opportunities for news organizations, as it delved deeper into the discussion surrounding the unauthorized utilization of published content for training artificial intelligence technologies.
On December 27, The Times filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that these companies violated its copyrights by employing millions of its articles for the purpose of training A.I. technologies such as the ChatGPT chatbot. The lawsuit contends that chatbots have now become competitors to The Times as providers of trustworthy information.
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In a 1,000-word blog post published on Monday, OpenAI explained that it has engaged in collaborations with news organizations and has established partnerships with certain entities, including The Associated Press. OpenAI also asserted that utilizing copyrighted materials to train its technologies falls within the bounds of fair use as per legal standards. Furthermore, the company pointed out that The Times' lawsuit fails to provide a comprehensive account of how OpenAI and its technologies function.
“We look forward to continued collaboration with news organizations, helping elevate their ability to produce quality journalism by realizing the transformative potential of A.I.,” the company wrote.
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The New York Times was the first prominent American media entity to initiate legal action against OpenAI and Microsoft concerning copyright concerns associated with its written content. Additionally, various other groups, including authors and software developers, have lodged copyright lawsuits against A.I. companies. These legal actions have been prompted by the surge in "generative A.I." technologies, which have the capability to create text, images, and other forms of media based on brief prompts.
OpenAI and other A.I. firms develop this technology by feeding it enormous quantities of digital data, a portion of which may contain copyrighted material. This has brought about an awareness that online information, encompassing stories, artwork, news pieces, message board posts, and photos, might possess considerable untapped worth.
A.I. companies have consistently asserted that they have the legal right to utilize such content for training their technologies without compensation, as the content is publicly accessible, and they are not replicating it in its entirety.
In its blog post, OpenAI mentioned that its discussions with The Times regarding a potential partnership seemed to be progressing positively, with their last communication occurring on December 19. According to OpenAI, during these negotiations, The Times raised concerns about OpenAI's technology which “regurgitate” some of their content, essentially generating excerpts that closely resembled The Times' content. However, The Times did not provide specific examples of this. OpenAI expressed surprise and disappointment when The Times filed its lawsuit just eight days later.
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In response, Ian Crosby, an attorney representing The Times from the law firm Susman Crosby, stated that OpenAI's blog post “concedes that OpenAI used the Times’s work” and that both OpenAI and Microsoft had been utilizing The Times' articles to develop products without permission or payment. “That’s not fair use by any measure,” he said.
OpenAI acknowledged that there were instances where its technology inadvertently reproduced articles, but it considered this to be a "rare bug" that it was actively addressing and resolving. The lawsuit filed by The Times included instances where ChatGPT replicated excerpts from its articles with remarkably close word-for-word similarity.
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“Intentionally manipulating our models to regurgitate is not an appropriate use of our technology and is against our terms of use,” OpenAI said.
