The New York Times has revealed that it’s suing OpenAI and Microsoft as part of a new lawsuit that alleges the companies have been using “millions” of its articles to train their chatbots, something that the publication isn’t too happy about for reasons that include the trending technology’s potential for harming the journalism business.
“The Times is the first major American media organization to sue the companies, the creators of ChatGPT and other popular A.I. platforms, over copyright issues associated with its written works,” the Times explained in a story that it published today, noting how it tried to work something out with Microsoft and OpenAI but realized that court action was necessary after “talks reached no resolution.”
The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, a new front in the debate over the use of published work to train AI. https://t.co/u8qZ247dCl
— The New York Times (@nytimes) December 27, 2023
According to the complaint, a full copy of which can be found here, chatbots have been providing users with “near-verbatim excerpts from Times articles that would otherwise require a paid subscription to view,” with Microsoft and OpenAI said to be placing a “particular emphasis on the use of Times journalism in training their A.I. programs because of the perceived reliability and accuracy of the material.”
“In one example of how A.I. systems use The Times’s material, the suit showed that Browse With Bing, a Microsoft search feature powered by ChatGPT, reproduced almost verbatim results from Wirecutter, The Times’s product review site,” The Times noted elsewhere in its coverage.
Additionally, the problem of A.I. “Hallucinations” was brought up by the writers, with Microsoft’s Bing Chat alleged to have “provided incorrect information that was said to have come from The Times, including results for the 15 most heart-healthy foods,’ 12 of which were not mentioned in an article by the paper.”
“If The Times and other news organizations cannot produce and protect their independent journalism, there will be a vacuum that no computer or artificial intelligence can fill,” reads one portion of the complaint. “Less journalism will be produced, and the cost to society will be enormous.”
Susman Godfrey, the law firm that represented Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation case against Fox News, has been retained by The Times as its lead outside counsel.