The lawsuit highlights the ongoing conflict between AI vendors and content creators over intellectual property rights. While vendors argue that web-scraping practices are protected under fair use doctrine, copyright holders disagree. The Times' lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal battles, with other suits filed by actress Sarah Silverman, novelists Jonathan Franzen and John Grisham, and several programmers. The Times is the largest publisher to date to sue AI vendors over alleged IP violations involving written works.
Key takeaways:
- The New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for allegedly violating copyright law by training AI models on Times’ content without consent.
- The Times is demanding the destruction of models and training data containing its content and is seeking billions of dollars in damages.
- Other lawsuits have been filed against AI vendors for similar reasons, including by actress Sarah Silverman and authors Jonathan Franzen and John Grisham.
- The Times attempted to reach a licensing arrangement with Microsoft and OpenAI in April, but the talks were not successful.