Eight newspaper publishers sue Microsoft and OpenAI over copyright infringement

Eight
U.S.
newspaper
publishers
filed
suit
against


Microsoft
and
OpenAI
in
a
New
York
federal
court
on
Tuesday,
claiming
the
technology
companies
reuse
their
articles
without
permission
in
generative
artificial
intelligence
products
and
incorrectly
attribute
inaccurate
information
to
them.

The
group
of
eight
newspaper
publishers
takes
issue
with
ChatGPT
and
Microsoft’s
Copilot
assistant
—
available
in
the
Windows
operating
system,
the
Bing
search
engine,
and
other
products
the
software
maker
produces.
ChatGPT
and
Copilot
have
been “purloining
millions
of
the
publishers’
copyrighted
articles
without
permission
and
without
payment,”
according
to

the
complaint,
which
had
been
filed
in
the
U.S.
District
Court
for
the
Southern
District
of
New
York.

The
newspaper
publishers
in
the
lawsuit
operate
the
New
York
Daily
News,
the
Chicago
Tribune,
the
Orlando
Sentinel,
the
Sun
Sentinel
in
Florida,
The
Mercury
News
in
California,
The
Denver
Post,
The
Orange
County
Register
in
California
and
the
Pioneer
Press
of
Minnesota.
All
fall
under
the
ownership
of
hedge
fund
Alden
Global
Capital.

“We
take
great
care
in
our
products
and
design
process
to
support
news
organizations,”
an
OpenAI
spokesperson
said
in
a
statement. “While
we
were
not
previously
aware
of
Alden
Global
Capital’s
concerns,
we
are
actively
engaged
in
constructive
partnerships
and
conversations
with
many
news
organizations
around
the
world
to
explore
opportunities,
discuss
any
concerns,
and
provide
solutions.
Along
with
our
news
partners,
we
see
immense
potential
for
AI
tools
like
ChatGPT
to
deepen
publishers’
relationships
with
readers
and
enhance
the
news
experience.”

Microsoft
declined
to
comment.

The
newspaper
publishers
said
in
the
lawsuit
that
OpenAI
has
drawn
on
data
sets
containing
text
from
their
newspapers
to
train
its
GPT-2
and
GPT-3
large
language
models,
which
can
spit
out
text
in
response
to
a
few
words
of
human
input.

“The
current
GPT-4
LLM
will
output
near-verbatim
copies
of
significant
portions
of
the
publishers’
works
when
prompted
to
do
so,”
the
complaint
said,
showing
several
examples
of
ChatGPT
and
the
Copilot
allegedly
doing
so.

The
publishers
said
Microsoft
copies
information
from
their
newspapers
for
the
Bing
search
index,
which
helps
inform
answers
in
the
Copilot.
But
such
output
doesn’t
always
provide
links
to
newspaper
websites,
where
they
can
view
ads
alongside
articles
or
pay
for
subscriptions.

The
legal
challenge
comes
four
months
after
The
New
York
Times

sued
OpenAI
over
copyright
infringement
in
the
ChatGPT
chatbot
that
the
startup
released
in
late
2022.
OpenAI
said
in
a

January
blog
post
that
the
case
is
without
merit,
adding
it
wants
to
support “a
healthy
news
ecosystem.”
That
same
month,
Sam
Altman,
OpenAI’s
CEO,

said
the
startup
wanted
to
pay
The
New
York
Times
and
was
surprised
to
learn
about
the
lawsuit.

In
recent
months,
OpenAI
has
signed
deals
with
a
handful
of
media
companies,
including

Axel
Springer
and
the

Financial
Times,
enabling
the
Microsoft-backed
startup
to
draw
on
the
publishers’
content
to
improve
AI
models.

Google,
which
has
its
own
general-purpose
chatbot
for
responding
to
user
queries,

said
in
February
that
it
had
reached
an
agreement
with


Reddit
that
includes
the
right
to
train
AI
models
on
the
platform’s
content.

The
New
York
Times
case
also
touched
on
the
matter
of
OpenAI
models
regurgitating
information
from
its
articles.
In
its
blog
post,
OpenAI
characterized
such
behavior
as “a
rare
failure
of
the
learning
process
that
we
are
continually
making
progress
on.”

Correction:
This
article
has
been
updated
to
reflect
the
correct
day
the
lawsuit
against
Microsoft
and
OpenAI
was
filed.

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