The New York Times sues OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement

The New York Times just fired a shot across the bow to the burgeoning generative AI industry.

In a federal district court lawsuit, the Times sued ChatGPT maker OpenAI and its major financial backer Microsoft for unspecified billions in damages, alleging widespread use of the venerable newspaper’s journalism to create copyright-infringing content. Examples given included ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Bing AI spouting paywalled text from the Times or its subsidiaries almost verbatim without proper sourcing, and even including false information that was improperly attributed to the Times.

According to the Times, it is the first American media organization to file such a lawsuit, creating potential ripple effects across the industry as everyone tries to figure out exactly how to legislate this stuff. It’s no secret that generative AI is less “artificial intelligence” and more “regurgitating existing internet content back at the user,” and that content often includes copyrighted materials. The obvious concern is that users can use ChatGPT to generate so-called journalism sourced from the Times, thus reducing their need to actually give the Times clicks and money.

One interesting nugget in the Times’ own report of its lawsuit is that the newspaper apparently tried to hash this out peacefully with OpenAI and Microsoft to no avail. The newspaper approached the tech companies in April to figure out an amicable resolution that may have included a “commercial agreement” and “technological guardrails” but those talks didn’t go anywhere.

Joke’s on us for expecting the usual news-less void between Christmas and New Years.