ChatGPT has captured the imagination of millions of people, offering a glimpse of what an AI-assisted future might look like.
The new technology also brings up novel copyright questions. Several people are worried that their work is being used to train AI without any form of compensation, for example.
Parent company OpenAI may in turn be worried that third parties are exploiting the ChatGPT model without permission. That’s what a recent DMCA takedown notice sent to Google tends to suggest.
OpenAI’s Takedown Notice
The takedown request lists OpenAI as the sender and targets several ChatGPT-related links. These include the ChatGod app, which has since been removed from Google Play, as well as the Chat AI Pro app for iOS.
The notice isn’t just restricted to apps. It also lists a PC Guide article with information on the chatbot, which appears to be relatively harmless.
This isn’t the first time that an OpenAI takedown notice has shown up in Google’s transparency report. In December, a similar DMCA request asked for the removal of an AI writing tool’s GitHub repository.
Legitimate?
These enforcement actions are certainly newsworthy, but we can’t independently confirm that OpenAI sent them. In the past, we have seen plenty of imposters claiming to be reputable rightsholders, and it could be the case here as well.
TorrentFreak reached out to OpenAI to confirm or deny the legitimacy of the notices but the organization didn’t respond. Google’s view on the matter is also unknown. What we do know is that the search engine hasn’t removed any of the reported URLs.
Without a comment from OpenAI, we considered binning this article, but then realized that ChatGPT may be able to help out here.
ChatGPT Weighs In
Unfortunately, ChatGPT can’t verify the notices but the AI language model explained that “it is possible that OpenAI has sent DMCA requests to Google in the past” since it’s a “common legal mechanism for requesting the removal of copyrighted material from search results.”
“OpenAI might send a DMCA request to Google’s search engine if they have found that their copyrighted material is being hosted or distributed illegally by a third-party website that appears in Google’s search results.
“This can include cases where websites are reproducing OpenAI’s content without permission, or distributing OpenAI’s content in a way that violates their terms of use or intellectual property rights,” ChatGPT added.
The AI model also added some nuance, noting that OpenAI would not typically ask Google to remove URLs with legitimate ChatGPT-related content. Those include articles discussing the technology or apps that use ChatGPT with proper authorization.
ChatGPT Can Help
ChatGPT was also able to confirm that the AI model itself is not behind these takedown notices since it does not have the legal authority or capacity to initiate legal actions such as DMCA requests.
That said, ChatGPT could assist OpenAI in the process, and it kindly provided an example of what this would look like, as well as a counter-notice, and even a rare putback-notice.
We could go as far as asking ChatGPT to draft a potential follow-up lawsuit, but that’s something for another time, perhaps.
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For context, the ChatGPT session that resulted in the answers above is available here in chronological order (1, 2, 3).
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Source : Why Would ‘OpenAI’ Send ChatGPT Takedown Notices to Google?
