OpenAI reacts to NYTimes lawsuit as more authors sue firm
NEW YORK, UNITED STATES — Artificial intelligence (AI) company OpenAI has rejected The New York Times’ recent copyright infringement lawsuit as “without merit,” arguing that training AI on published content constitutes fair use.
In a public statement, the AI giant accused The Times of “intentionally manipulating prompts, often including lengthy excerpts of articles, in order to get the model to regurgitate.”
Amidst intensifying legal battles, OpenAI maintains using copyrighted content is necessary for developing advanced AI, raising questions around AI innovation versus intellectual property rights.
“Training AI models using publicly available internet materials is fair use, as supported by long-standing and widely accepted precedents. We view this principle as fair to creators, necessary for innovators, and critical for U.S. competitiveness,” said OpenAI.
OpenAI still hopes for a continued partnership with The Times and other news organizations to produce quality journalism “by realizing the transformative potential of AI.”
Adding to OpenAI’s mounting legal troubles are two prominent nonfiction authors, Nicholas Basbanes and Nicholas Gage, who have filed a lawsuit, accusing them of plagiarizing their work without permission or compensation.
The lawsuit alleges OpenAI and Microsoft copied portions of the authors’ books into datasets used to train AI models like ChatGPT, the popular conversational bot. Basbanes is known for his writing on book culture, while Gage is an acclaimed investigative journalist.
Filed Friday in a Manhattan federal court, the proposed class action suit claims the companies stole copyrighted materials in a “massive and deliberate theft” to build a billion-dollar commercial enterprise.
The authors are seeking up to $150,000 per infringed work plus an injunction to prevent future unauthorized use.
The new case adds to growing legal scrutiny around AI training methods involving copyrighted text, images, video or audio. OpenAI maintains its systems benefit society while sufficiently crediting creators, but faces lawsuits testing these defenses.
