OpenAI, Microsoft sued by Center for Investigative Reporting as news industry bolsters attack on AI

The
news
industry
just
gained
a
powerful
ally
in
its
effort
to
take
on
OpenAI.

The
Center
for
Investigative
Reporting,
the
country’s
oldest
nonprofit
newsroom,

sued
OpenAI
and
lead
backer


Microsoft
in
federal
court
on
Thursday
for
alleged
copyright
infringement,
following

similar
suits
from
publications
including


The
New
York
Times,
Chicago
Tribune
and
the
New
York
Daily
News.

The
CIR
alleged
in
the
suit,
filed
in
the
Southern
District
of
New
York,
that
OpenAI
“copied,
used,
abridged,
and
displayed
CIR’s
valuable
content
without
CIR’s
permission
or
authorization,
and
without
any
compensation
to
CIR.”

Since
its
public
release
in
late
2022,
OpenAI’s
ChatGPT
chatbot
has
been
crawling
the
web
to
provide
answers
to
user
queries,
often
relying
heavily
on
copy
pulled
directly
from
news
stories.

“When
they
populated
their
training
sets
with
works
of
journalism,
Defendants
had
a
choice:
to
respect
works
of
journalism,
or
not,”
the
plaintiffs
wrote
in
the
lawsuit.
“Defendants
chose
the
latter.”

In
a
press
release
on
Thursday,
Monika
Bauerlein,
CEO
of
the
nonprofit,
accused
the
defendants
of
“free
rider
behavior.”

“OpenAI
and
Microsoft
started
vacuuming
up
our
stories
to
make
their
product
more
powerful,
but
they
never
asked
for
permission
or
offered
compensation,
unlike
other
organizations
that
license
our
material,”
Bauerlein
said.

The
CIR,
which
is
home
to
Mother
Jones
and
audio
programming
Reveal,
also
alleged
in
the
suit
that
OpenAI
“trained
ChatGPT
not
to
acknowledge
or
respect
copyright.
And
they
did
this
all
without
permission.”

The
group
said
it’s
seeking
“actual
damages
and
Defendants’
profits,
or
statutory
damages
of
no
less
than
$750
per
infringed
work
and
$2,500
per
DMCA
violation,”
referring
to
the
Digital
Millennium
Copyright
Act.

OpenAI
and
Microsoft
didn’t
immediately
respond
to
requests
for
comment.

With
the
news
industry
broadly
struggling
to
maintain
sufficient
advertising
and
subscription
revenue
to
pay
for
its
costly
newsgathering
operations,
many
publications
are
aggressively
trying
to
protect
their
businesses
as
AI-generated
content
becomes
more
prevalent.

In
December,
The
New
York
Times filed a
suit
against Microsoft and
OpenAI,
alleging
intellectual
property
violations
related
to
its
journalistic
content
appearing
in
ChatGPT
training
data.
The
Times
said
it
seeks
to
hold
Microsoft
and
OpenAI accountable
for “billions
of
dollars
in
statutory
and
actual
damages”
related
to
the
“unlawful
copying
and
use
of
the
Times’s
uniquely
valuable
works,”
according
to
a
filing
in
the
U.S.
District
Court
for
the
Southern
District
of
New
York.
OpenAI

disagreed
with
the
Times’
characterization
of
events.

The
Chicago
Tribune,
along
with
seven
other
newspapers,
followed
with
a

similar
suit
in
April.

Outside
of
news,
a
group
of
prominent
U.S.
authors,
including
Jonathan
Franzen,
John
Grisham,
George
R.R.
Martin
and
Jodi
Picoult, sued
OpenAI
last
year,
alleging
copyright
infringement
in
using
their
work
to
train
ChatGPT.

But
not
all
news
organizations
are
gearing
up
for
a
fight,
and
some
are
instead
joining
forces
with
OpenAI.
Earlier
on
Thursday,

OpenAI and
Time
magazine

announced
a
“multi-year
content
deal”
that
will
allow
OpenAI
to
access
current
and
archived
articles
from
more
than
100
years
of
Time’s
history.

OpenAI
will
be
able
to
display
Time’s
content
within
its
ChatGPT
chatbot
in
response
to
user
questions,
according
to
a

press
release,
and
to
use
Time’s
content
“to
enhance
its
products,”
or,
likely,
to
train
its artificial
intelligence models.

OpenAI
announced
a
similar
partnership
in
May
with


News
Corp.,
allowing
OpenAI
to
access
current
and
archived
articles
from
The
Wall
Street
Journal,
MarketWatch,
Barron’s,
the
New
York
Post
and
other
publications.

Reddit
also
announced in
May
that
it
will
partner
with
OpenAI,
allowing
the
company
to
train
its
AI models
on
Reddit
content.

WATCH:

Microsoft
gets
put
on
AI
backfoot
after
Apple-OpenAI
deal