New York Times Sues OpenAI Over ChatGPT's Alleged Copyright Infringement

By
Taylor Tompkins
Taylor Tompkins
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Taylor Tompkins has worked for more than a decade as a journalist covering business, finance, and the economy. She has logged thousands of hours interviewing experts, analyzing data, and writing articles to help readers understand economic forces. She is the Economics Editor for news at Investopedia.

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Updated December 27, 2023
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at an event.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Key Takeaways

  • The New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft Corp. for copyright infringement.
  • The suit claims that the companies' ChatGPT artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot is trained on the newspaper's articles without permission.
  • By training the chatbot on its content, ChatGPT is creating a competitor for The New York Times and stealing readers, according to the lawsuit.

One of the country's most-read newspapers is suing the maker of ChatGPT, saying the chatbot was trained on and repurposes its content.

The New York Times Co. (NYT) filed a copyright infringement lawsuit in a New York U.S. district court Wednesday, claiming that OpenAI and its largest shareholder, Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), trained its popular AI chatbot on millions of the newspaper's articles. The New York Times claims that "using The Times’s content without payment to create products that substitute for The Times" makes the chatbot a competitor and steals readers.

The suit doesn't ask for a specific amount of money, but it does claim that the companies should be held responsible for billions of dollars in damages and should destroy models and data that use information from the paper.

This is the first lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft filed by a major media organization over copyright infringement, but it's not the first legal challenge to ChatGPT. Prominent authors including John Grisham, Jonathan Franzen, and Jodi Picoult sued OpenAI over similar claims in September. The authors claimed OpenAI is committing "systematic theft on a mass scale" by using their books to train the chatbot without their permission.

The Times' lawsuit also comes as accountability for AI tools moves to the forefront of government officials' minds. Experts say the U.S. could regulate the safety, security, and transparency of AI tools in 2024.

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  1. The New York Times. "THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY, Plaintiff, v. MICROSOFT CORPORATION, OPENAI, INC., Defendants."

  2. AP. "‘Game of Thrones’ Creator and Other Authors Sue ChatGPT-Maker OpenAI for Copyright Infringement."

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