The New York Times Sues OpenAI and Microsoft: AI Copyright Impact

The New York Times (NYT):

The New York Times (NYT) has become the first major news publisher to sue OpenAI and Microsoft, the maker of ChatGPT and other popular artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, citing “unlawful” use of copyrighted material.

The lawsuit says the defendants extensively scoured The New York Times (NYT’s) original content to build their models and formulate responses. “Defendants seek to exploit The Times’s massive investment in journalism,” the complaint says, accusing OpenAI and Microsoft of “using the content without payment to create products that replace The Times and take its audience away.”. Microsoft has made a major investment in OpenAI.

It’s a fight that could shape the legal framework around intellectual property (IP) rights in the era of generic AI platforms. It is also emblematic of the larger debate about how generic AI platforms could impact those in the creative industry, given that such systems are built on work done by creators of original content, which is then used by an algorithm. Is synthesized through medium and presented as fresh. Information by an AI system.

Earlier this year, two US authors also sued OpenAI, claiming in a proposed class action that the company misused their works to “train” ChatGPT.

What is the NYT’s main contention against OpenAI and Microsoft?

The lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Manhattan, argues that millions of articles published by the publication were used to train automated chatbots that now compete with news outlets as sources of reliable information.

The New York Times (NYT) reported that it had contacted Microsoft and OpenAI in April to raise concerns about the use of its intellectual property and to explore an “amicable solution,” which would possibly include a commercial agreement and a “technical agreement” around generic AI products. Railing” included. But the talks did not yield any solution, the publication said.

The New York Times (NYT): The publication also alleges that OpenAI and Microsoft’s large language models, which power ChatGPT and Copilot, “can generate output that closely summarizes the Times’ content verbatim.” and imitates his expressive style.” This “undermines” and harms the Times’ relationship with readers while also depriving it of “subscription, licensing, advertising, and affiliate revenues.”

The lawsuit said the “unlawful use” of the newspaper’s “copyrighted news articles, in-depth investigations, opinion pieces, reviews, how-to guides, and more” to create an artificial intelligence product interfered with the Times’s ability to provide that service. Puts in danger. ,

Sue A.I. highlights the potential damage it could do to The Times’ brand. “Hallucinations”, a phenomenon in which chatbots respond with false information that is later falsely attributed to a source.

In August, The New York Times (NYT) blocked OpenAI’s web crawler, preventing the company from using the publication’s content to train its AI models.

AI and IP Rights

Generative AI platforms like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard have sparked debate over IP rights over original content on the Internet.

The responses that AI platforms like ChatGPT and Bard generate are based on millions of pieces of text that creators, including news publishers, have uploaded online.

The music business is also pushing for the use of AI in the industry. For example, Universal Music Group has asked streaming services like Spotify to stop developers from scraping their content to train AI bots in creating new songs.

This debate is gaining momentum at a time when countries across the world, including India, have antiquated copyright laws that need to be re-imagined, keeping the AI wave in mind. For example, in India, creative works are regulated under the Copyright Act 1957.

The definition of “author” under the Act includes any literary, dramatic, musical, or artistic work that is computer-generated and the person who creates the work. But that definition doesn’t take into account the fact that AI systems don’t generate information themselves. They are, simply, as good as the base dataset they are trained on. And the base dataset is created by copyrighted works produced by other authors.

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