How OpenAI and Microsoft Assisted the New York Times, Raw Story, and AlterNet to Defend Copyright-Protected Works of Journalism

According to the lawsuits, openai and microsoft are aware of potential illegal activity. The publications point to how OpenAI has an opt-out system so website owners can control what is published on their websites.

The New York Times filed a suit claiming that the work they reproduce is journalistic. OpenAI asked a federal court to dismiss the Times lawsuit, saying the publication exploited a bug on ChatGPT to regurgitate its articles.

The Intercept, Raw Story, and AlterNet filed separate lawsuits in the Southern District of New York. The law firm is working on all of the cases.

The publications said ChatGPT “at least some of the time” reproduces “verbatim or nearly verbatim copyright-protected works of journalism without providing author, title, copyright or terms of use information contained in those works.” According to the plaintiffs, if ChatGPT trained on material that included copyright information, the chatbot “would have learned to communicate that information when providing responses.”

Raw Story and AlterNet’s lawsuit goes further, saying OpenAI and Microsoft “had reason to know that ChatGPT would be less popular and generate less revenue if users believed that ChatGPT responses violated third-party copyrights.” Both Microsoft and Openai offer legal cover for paying customers in the event that they get sued for using copyrighted works.