The publications charge the businesses with utilizing their copyrighted content for AI instruction.
The Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News, and the Orlando Sentinel are among the publications that have filed a lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI, as reported by The Verge. There are eight publications that are participating in this particular lawsuit. All of these publications are owned by Alden Capital Group (ACG), and they are accusing the companies of “purloining millions” of their copyrighted articles “without permission and without payment to fuel the commercialization of their generative artificial intelligence products, including ChatGPT and Copilot.”
A lawsuit has been filed against Microsoft and OpenAI for their usage of copyrighted works without the express agreement of publishers. This is just the latest complaint that has been filed against them. There was also a famous lawsuit filed against the firms by the New York Times before the end of the previous year, saying that they had utilized “almost a century’s worth of copyrighted content.” Despite the fact that they did not have a prior licensing arrangement, their goods are able to reproduce the articles of the Times word for word and can “imitate its expressive style,” according to the editorial of the journal. By asserting that generative artificial intelligence had the potential to be a danger to independent media, Microsoft accused the Times of engaging in a form of doomsday futurology in a move that sought to dismiss crucial aspects of the complaint.
The newspapers that are part of the ACG have the same complaint, which is that the chatbots of the firms are repeating their articles word for word immediately after they are published, but they do not include a conspicuous link that directs readers back to the original sources. Within the complaint that they filed, they provided various examples. Furthermore, it appears that the chatbots are experiencing hallucinations, and they are attributing false reports to the publications of the ACG. It was contended by the publisher that the defendants are responsible for paying for the computers, the specialized chips, and the electricity that they utilize in order to construct and run their generative artificial intelligence products. In spite of the fact that they require content in order to train their massive language models, they are doing it “without permission and without paying for the privilege” of using copyrighted pieces. OpenAI has previously admitted that it would be “impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials.” The plaintiffs made reference to this admission in their original statement.
It has been said by the plaintiffs that OpenAI is no longer a non-profit organization and that it is currently valued at $90 billion. ChatGPT and Copilot, on the other hand, have contributed “hundreds of billions of dollars to Microsoft’s market value.” The publications are requesting that the court order the defendants to destroy GPT and LLM models that use their materials, and they are also requesting that the court award them a sum of damages that has not been established.