OpenAI Calls New York Times Copyright Suit “meritless”

(CNN) — OpenAI this Monday opposed the lawsuit filed last month New York Timeswhich alleges that the artificial intelligence giant violated copyright law by using journalistic material from New York Times to train your systems.

“New York Times doesn’t tell the whole story,” OpenAI said in a blog post about the lawsuit, adding that its “goals are to support a healthy news ecosystem, be a good partner, and create mutually beneficial opportunities.”

New York Times in December sued OpenAI as well as its business partner and investor Microsoft for copyright infringement.

He New York Times said the two companies’ artificial intelligence technologies illegally copied millions of newspaper articles to train ChatGPT and other instant information access services. New York Times. (Microsoft has not commented on the lawsuit.)

The complaint is one of a series of recent lawsuits aimed at curbing the alleged theft of vast amounts of Internet content without compensation to train so-called large-scale artificial intelligence models.

In a statement Monday, OpenAI reiterated its claim that training artificial intelligence systems using “public internet materials” falls under the copyright law’s “fair use” protection. “We believe this principle is fair to creators, essential to innovators, and critical to U.S. competitiveness,” the company said.

In his lawsuit New York Times rebutted OpenAi’s fair use argument, saying that ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Bing chatbot offer a service similar to a newspaper’s.

“There is nothing ‘transformative’ about using Times content without paying to create products that will replace the Times and steal its audience,” he said. New York Times at his request. “Because the output of defendants’ GenAI models competes with and closely mimics the input data used to train them, copying work from the Times for this purpose is not fair use.”

It is unknown whether OpenAI has already formally responded to the lawsuit; There were no new documents publicly available on the list as of Monday afternoon.

CNN contacted New York Times to ask you to comment on OpenAI’s statement.

In his lawsuit New York Times says that because the AI ​​tools have been trained on its content, they sometimes provide verbatim copies of sections of Times reports.

“We also expect our users to act responsibly; “Intentionally manipulating our models to replicate them mechanically is not an appropriate use of our technology and is against our terms of use,” OpenAI said.

The technology company also accused New York Times about ChatGPT’s “intentional” manipulation or selection of imitation examples, which he detailed in his complaint.

OpenAI also cited licensing agreements it has entered into with other publishers such as Axel Springer and the Associated Press to compensate them for using their content to train their models, as well as media outlets’ ability to “opt out.” ” of your tools for analyzing your sites, how it was done New York Times in August.

New York Times In its lawsuit, it said it spent months negotiating with OpenAI and Microsoft to obtain fair compensation and establish the terms of a similar licensing agreement. However, he assured that the companies failed to reach a fair solution.

On Monday, OpenAI said those conversations continued until Dec. 19, a week before the complaint was filed. New York Times.

“Talks focused on a valuable partnership around attribution streaming on ChatGPT, which will give The New York Times a new way to connect with its existing and new readers and give our users access to their reporting,” OpenAI said. .

“We believe The New York Times’ lawsuit is without merit. Despite this, we believe in constructive cooperation with The New York Times and respect its long history,” he added.