- OpenAI claims to feed its chatbot directly with articles from the Times, enabling it to extract verbatim quotes.
- For these and other reasons, OpenAI is asking the U.S. District Court to dismiss certain claims in a copyright infringement lawsuit filed against it.
- The Times said OpenAI used its products to “seek evidence” that they were stealing and duplicating its copyrighted works.
In a petition, OpenAI alleged that The New York Times used “deceptive manipulations” to trick ChatGPT into repeating its content. For these and similar reasons, OpenAI is asking the US District Court to dismiss certain claims in its copyright infringement lawsuit.
OpenAI claims that the Times exploited a bug that it is currently working to fix, allowing it to extract verbatim quotes by directly feeding its articles to the chatbot. “This is not how people use OpenAI products.” The company says, referring to the April 2023 Times article titled “35 Ways Real People Are Using Artificial Intelligence Now.” These are very similar to the arguments OpenAI made in its public response in January.
The Times filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft in December. The Times claimed that companies trained AI models on their own content and that chatbots could reproduce articles verbatim. The publication stated that this situation deprived it of income and jeopardized its relationship with its readers.
Ian Crosby, the Times’ lead attorney, said calling the outlet’s efforts a “hack” was a misnomer. He said they used OpenAI’s products to “look for evidence” that they were stealing and duplicating The Times’ copyrighted work. He added that OpenAI does not deny that it copied Times’ works without permission within the statute of limitations.
OpenAI is seeking partial dismissal of the Times’ direct copyright infringement claim to the extent that it is based on acts of reproduction that occurred more than three years before this lawsuit. It also asks the court to reject claims that it created unfair competition through abuse. The Times lawsuit also alleges trademark damage, common law unfair competition by misappropriation, and indirect copyright infringement.
OpenAI similarly narrowed the complaints in a lawsuit filed by Sarah Silverman and other authors to a single claim of copyright infringement. As successful as OpenAI’s bid was, these two lawsuits are not the only lawsuits filed against AI companies. Startups like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Stability AI are currently staring down a widening pit of legal action. Some of these lawsuits are being filed by veteran plaintiff organizations with decades-long copyright battles.
Compiled by: Esin Özcan