New York Times sues Microsoft and OpenAI over AI training data

Apple has been making all the headlines for the last week with the Apple Watch import ban in the US, but it is not the only company that is currently facing a lawsuit. 

Microsoft and OpenAI are being dragged to court due to the companies’ large language models (LLMs), which allegedly have been trained on data they didn’t own the copyrights to.

The lawsuit has been filed by none other than The New York Times with the allegation that the AI models that power Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT are guilty of copyright infringement.

New York Times is pissed and seeking retribution

According to the filed lawsuit, The New York Times claims that Microsoft and OpenAI have used “millions” of publication articles without asking for permission to train their LLMs.

NY Times has even asserted that Microsoft’s and OpenAI’s chatbots “directly compete with Times content.” The lawsuit states, 

ChatGPT and Copilot can generate output that recites Times content verbatim, closely summarizes it, and mimics its expressive style.

The New York Times further states the use of chatbot and its training may have been lucrative for Microsoft and OpenAI.

Microsoft’s recent market capitalization has hit the trillion-dollar mark, while OpenAI’s valuation has touched $90 billion.

NY Times has further asserted in the lawsuit that the chatbot poses a serious threat to high-quality journalism. 

It also claims this hurts The New York Times’s ability to monetize content, saying “Defendants seek to free-ride on The Times’s massive investment in its journalism.”

The publication has also claimed that they even reached out to these tech giants with the hope of receiving a fair value, but that negotiation fell apart.

So, now, The New York Times is pissed, and they are seeking billions of dollars in damages from Microsoft and OpenAI for allegedly copying its work.

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