NYT is seeking damages and a jury trial, and demands the destruction of all LLM models and training sets that incorporate Times Works. The newspaper alleges that OpenAI, despite its non-profit origins, has become a multi-billion-dollar business built on the unlicensed use of copyrighted works. This lawsuit follows a recent deal between Axel Springer and OpenAI to make summaries of the former's content available on the latter's products, a deal that NYT had discussions about but found unsatisfactory.
Key takeaways:
- The New York Times has filed a complaint against Microsoft and OpenAI, alleging theft of the newspaper's copyrighted works for training Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT.
- The complaint accuses Microsoft's assistants, Microsoft 365 Copilot and Bing Chat, of displaying Times content in generative output, either as 'memorized' copies or as synthetic search results similar to Times Works.
- The Times claims it has never permitted anyone, including Microsoft and OpenAI, to use its content for Generative AI purposes and is seeking damages, a jury trial, and the destruction of all GPT or other LLM models and training sets that incorporate Times Works.
- Despite discussions with OpenAI, The Times has not reached a satisfactory resolution, unlike Axel Springer who recently announced a plan to make summaries of its content available from OpenAI's products, including ChatGPT.