The Times is the first major news publisher to take OpenAI to court over the use of its copyright material in its popular chatbot. The suit follows months of tense negotiations between the two sides.
The New York Times sued OpenAI and its biggest backer, Microsoft, over copyright infringement on Wednesday, alleging the creator of ChatGPT used the newspaper’s material without permission to train the massively popular chatbot.
In August, NPR reported that lawyers for OpenAI and the Times were engaged in tense licensing negotiations that had turned acrimonious, with the Times threatening to take legal action to protect the unauthorized use of its stories, which were being used to generate ChatGPT answers in response to user questions.
And now, the newspaper has done just that. OpenAI has said using news articles is «fair use»
In the suit, attorneys for the Times claimed it sought «fair value» in its talks with OpenAI over the use of its content, but both sides could not reach an agreement.
OpenAI leaders have insisted that its mass scraping of large swaths of the internet, including articles from the Times, is protected under a legal doctrine known as «fair use.»
It allows for material to be reused without permission in certain instances, including for research and teaching.
