The New York Times is suing Microsoft and OpenAI, claiming that the two companies have been utilizing millions of its stories for artificial intelligence (AI) training purposes without the publication’s consent. According to The Times, it is the first significant American media outlet to file a copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, the companies that made ChatGPT and other AI platforms. The case was filed in Manhattan Federal Court on Wednesday and states that the defendants “seek to free-ride on the Times’s massive investment in its journalism by using it to build substitutive products without permission or payment.” “There is nothing ‘transformative’ about using the Times’s content without payment to create products that substitute for the Times and steal audiences away from it.” The Times stated that while it is not requesting a specific amount of damages.
In papers filed in Federal Court in New York, the authors allege “flagrant and harmful infringements of plaintiffs’ registered copyrights” and called the ChatGPT program a “massive commercial enterprise” that is reliant upon “systematic theft on a mass scale.”
The suit was organized by the Authors Guild and includes David Baldacci, Sylvia Day, Jonathan Franzen, and Elin Hilderbrand, among others.
