The lawsuit also highlights the issue of ChatGPT's tendency to "hallucinate," or produce fabricated information, which the Times claims causes "commercial and competitive injury." This is the first major lawsuit of its kind, raising questions about whether AI companies are breaking intellectual property law by training AI models with copyrighted material.
Key takeaways:
- The New York Times has filed a federal lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, alleging that they used the newspaper's material without permission to train the chatbot, ChatGPT.
- OpenAI has defended its actions by claiming that its mass scraping of internet content, including articles from the Times, is protected under the "fair use" legal doctrine. However, the Times argues that OpenAI's use of its content is not "transformative" and therefore does not qualify as fair use.
- The lawsuit seeks to hold OpenAI and Microsoft accountable for "billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages" for the alleged unlawful copying and use of the Times' articles. The Times is also asking for the destruction of all large language model datasets, including ChatGPT, that rely on its copyrighted works.
- The Times' lawsuit is the first major legal action by a media organization against OpenAI over the question of whether AI companies broke intellectual property law by training AI models with copyrighted material. This follows a series of complaints filed against OpenAI by writers, comedians, artists and others over copyright infringement.