The legal battle against generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies continues as a group of eight newspapers files a lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI, the developer behind ChatGPT.
On Tuesday, the Chicago Tribune, Denver Post, Orange County Register, St. Paul Pioneer-Press, Orlando Sentinel, South Florida Sun Sentinel, New York Daily News — all of which are under the umbrella of MediaNews Group — filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York.
In this lawsuit, the outlets allege that Microsoft and OpenAI have illicitly used works copyrighted by the newspapers.
Generative AI — employed by both Microsoft and OpenAI — is a technology that is able to produce content such as prose, images, and audio files.
To do this, generative AI programs rely upon large-language models (LLMs) that are trained using vast amounts of existing data until it is able to correctly predict what comes next in a given piece of source material with a high rate of accuracy.
Whether or not the use of copyrighted materials in this process constitutes a violation of the law has been the subject of much debate in recent years as this technology has rapidly advanced.
In the lawsuit filed Tuesday, these new outlets allege that Microsoft and OpenAI “scrape” content from their websites, “copying it onto their systems.”
“At the end of the process, the Microsoft and OpenAI [generative AI] systems offer their users content that is identical to, or a slightly masked version of, the newspapers’ content,” the lawsuit claims.
Last year, similar complaints were lodged against these same companies by the New York Times, as well as by a number of recognizable authors, including David Baldacci, John Grisham, George R.R. Martin, and Jodi Picoult.
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“Microsoft and OpenAI bizarrely claim they are entitled to copy and use any written product on which they want to train their [generative AI] systems,” the Plaintiffs in Tuesday’s lawsuit said. “Microsoft and OpenAI also say even after their systems are trained, they are entitled to copy local newspapers day in and day out, and store the newspapers’ content on their servers, as source materials for their [generative AI] products’ output.”
“They even go so far as to say that their [generative AI] products are allowed to copy and provide back to their users verbatim reprints of local news articles, editorials, reviews, and stories that the local reporters and editors spend their time, resources, and in some cases even their physical safety, to write and publish,” the newspapers allege.
“This lawsuit is not a battle between new technology and old technology,” the filing argues. “It is not a battle between a thriving industry and an industry in transition. It is most surely not a battle to resolve the phalanx of social, political, moral, and economic issues that [generative AI] raises.”
“This lawsuit is about how Microsoft and OpenAI are not entitled to use copyrighted newspaper content to build their new trillion-dollar enterprises, without paying for that content,” the outlets conclude. “As this lawsuit will demonstrate, Defendants must both obtain the Publishers’ consent to use their content and pay fair value for such use.”
According to the Associated Press, Microsoft has declined to comment on the lawsuit, and OpenAI has said that it “takes care to support news organizations.”
“While we were not previously aware of [the newspapers’] 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,” OpenAI said.
The Plaintiffs in Tuesday’s lawsuit filed a combined eight counts against Microsoft and OpenAI, including for copyright infringement, vicarious copyright infringement, contributory copyright infringement, removal of copyright management information, common law unfair competition by misappropriation, trademark dilution, and dilution and injury to business reputation.
As a result of these claims, the Plaintiffs are asking the Court to award a variety of damages and permanently enjoin the Defendants from engaging in the “unlawful, unfair, and infringing conduct” described in the lawsuit.
In addition to this, they are asking the Court to require Microsoft and OpenAI to destroy any LLMs and training sets that make use of the Plaintiffs’ protected work.
The eight newspapers that signed onto this lawsuit have requested that the Southern District of New York provide a jury trial for this case.
