Copyright violations on a huge scale are alleged to have occurred, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting.
The Center for Investigative Reporting, which is the oldest nonprofit newsroom in the United States and is responsible for producing Mother Jones and Reveal, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft on Thursday, alleging that they used the content of the organization to train artificial intelligence models without obtaining approval or pay. This lawsuit is the most recent in a long series of lawsuits that have been launched by publishers and creators accused of breaking copyright by corporations that use generative artificial intelligence.
“OpenAI and Microsoft began sifting through our stories in order to make their product more powerful, but they never asked for permission or offered compensation, in contrast to other organizations that license our material,” said Monika Bauerlein, the Chief Executive Officer of the Center for Investigative Reporting, in a statement. It is not only unjust, but it is also a violation of copyright to engage in this activity of free riding. Both OpenAI and Microsoft are aware of the fact that the work that journalists do, both at CIR and elsewhere, is quite valuable. OpenAI and Microsoft, according to Bauerlein, treat the work of nonprofit and independent publishers “as free raw material for their products.” Bauerlein further stated that such actions by corporations that develop generative AI undermine the public’s access to true information in a “disappearing news landscape.”
In response to a request for comment made by Engadget, neither OpenAI nor Microsoft provided a response.
OpenAI and Microsoft, which owns nearly half of the company, are accused of several violations of the Copyright Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the case that was filed by the CIR. The lawsuit was filed in the federal court in Manhattan.
When it comes to generative artificial intelligence, news organizations are currently present at a crossroads. The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, The New York Daily News, The Intercept, AlterNet, and other publications are only some of the publishers that have joined the lawsuit against OpenAI. However, other publishers have elected to enter into license agreements with the firm. Because of these arrangements, OpenAI will be able to train its models on archives and ongoing content that is published by these publishers, and it will also be able to credit information from these publishers in the responses that ChatGPT provides.
TIME magazine, for example, made an announcement on the same day that the CIR filed a lawsuit against OpenAI. The agreement between the two parties would allow TIME magazine to gain access to 101 years’ worth of archives. OpenAI inked a multi-year agreement for $250 million with News Corp, the company that owns The Wall Street Journal, in order to train its models on more than a dozen brands that are owned by the publisher. This collaboration took place last month. In addition, OpenAI has struck contracts with the Financial Times, Axel Springer (the proprietor of Politico and Business Insider), the Associated Press, and Dotdash Meredith.