Eight American newspapers joined together to sue OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, and Microsoft, accusing these two technology companies of having “filtered millions” of copyrighted journalistic articles without authorization and without paying, to train their intelligence chatbots artificial.
The New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, the Denver Post and other newspapers were the first to file the lawsuit on Tuesday the 30th in federal court in New York.
“We have spent billions of dollars gathering information and reporting news in our publications, and we cannot allow OpenAI and Microsoft to expand the playbook of big tech companies to steal our work and increase their own business at our expense,” reads a statement written by Frank Pine, CEO of MediaNews Group and Tribune Publishing.
The other newspapers participating in the lawsuit are the Mercury News, the Orange County Register and the St. Paul Pioneer-Press, owned by MediaNews Group, and the Orlando Sentinel and the South Florida Sun Sentinel, owned by Tribune Publishing. All are owned by Alden Global Capital.
The software giant declined to comment. OpenAI said in a statement that it was always in its plans to support the news organizations.
“While we were not aware of Alden Global Capital’s concerns, we are actively engaged in constructive partnerships and conversations with many news organizations around the world to explore opportunities, discuss any concerns and provide solutions,” the statement said.
This is the latest lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft in Manhattan federal court, where the companies already face a series of lawsuits. Copyright featured by the New York Times, other media, and best-selling authors such as John Grisham, Jodi Picoult, and George RR Martin.
The companies also face another set of lawsuits in federal court in San Francisco.
OpenAI also accused The New York Times of violating ChatGPT’s usage guidelines to generate the content that was submitted to support its lawsuit.
Data protection
Tech companies have argued that taking large amounts of publicly accessible internet content to train their AI systems is protected by the “fair use” doctrine of US copyright law. In some cases, they have avoided potential legal challenges by paying organizations for that content.
Last year, The Associated Press agreed to a partnership with OpenAI, in which the tech company would pay an undisclosed sum for a license to access the AP’s archive of news stories.
OpenAI has also established licensing agreements with other media companies, including newspaper industry giants such as Germany’s Axel Springer and Spain’s Prisa Media, French newspaper Le Monde and, most recently, the London-based Financial Times. .
In that case, OpenAI vigorously defended itself, arguing that drawing on publicly available data to power its platform, including news articles, constitutes fair use.