OpenAII, dedicated to developing artificial intelligence (AI) models and application tools, and its &#34;backer&#34; Microsoft, are facing a hefty claim from media giant The New York Times.
On Wednesday, December 27th, Eastern Time, The New York Times announced that it has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAII in the Southern District of New York Federal Court, accusing them of copyright infringement and misuse of the media's intellectual property. The lawsuit alleges that they have &#34;copied and used millions&#34; of articles from the media outlet to train their large language models (LLMs) and are now directly competing with the newspaper's content.
According to the court documents, The New York Times is seeking &#34;billions of dollars in statutory damages and actual losses&#34; from Microsoft and OpenAII, arguing that these two defendants should be held legally responsible for &#34;illegally copying and using The New York Times' valuable works.&#34;
The newspaper also believes that the defendants have created a business model based on &#34;massive infringement of copyright&#34; and accuses their AI systems of utilizing protected works from The New York Times and, in many cases, retaining a significant portion of the content.
The New York Times points out that Microsoft and OpenAII's AI models have harmed the media's ability to protect and monetize its content, posing a threat to high-quality journalism. The lawsuit specifically mentions Microsoft's Copilot and OpenAII's ChatGPT, stating that The New York Times has made substantial investments in its news business, while these two companies are attempting to ride on the coattails of Copilot and ChatGPT without permission or payment, using The New York Times' investments to create substitutes for the newspaper's products.
In a subsequent email statement, The New York Times acknowledged the influence and potential of generative AI on the public and the news industry, but added that news materials should be used for commercial profit only with permission from the original source.

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The New York Times accuses Microsoft and OpenAI of illegally copying and using millions of their articles to train large language models. They believe that their AI models have harmed the protection and monetization of news media content, posing a threat to high-quality news reporting.

Claiming billions of dollars! The New York Times sues Microsoft and OpenAI for copyright infringement