Organizations Sue Microsoft and OpenAI for Copyright Infringement

Three more organizations are following The New York Times’s footsteps in suing Microsoft and OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, for copyright infringement.

Online media outlets Raw Story and Alternet and The Intercept filed separate lawsuits alleging the removal of the author’s name and other copyright violations while the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot was trained.

In its lawsuit, The Intercept’s attorneys allege ChatGPT provides responses to users that “regurgitate verbatim or nearly verbatim copyright-protected works of journalism” without crediting the author or including titles in the work.

Alternet and Raw Story said in their separate lawsuit that Microsoft and OpenAI “had reason to know” ChatGPT would be “less popular” and “would generate less revenue if users believed that ChatGPT responses violated third-party copyrights or if users were otherwise concerned about further distributing ChatGPT responses.”

Both lawsuits were filed in the Southern District of New York are litigated by the same law firm.

The lawsuit follows the one The New York Times filed shortly before the new year, alleging the chatbots’ use of their stories to train its models. OpenAI sought to dismiss the lawsuit. On Monday, the tech company said ChatGPT is not a “substitute for a subscription to The New York Times” and asked a judge to toss the lawsuit.

The new lawsuit comes as OpenAI faces increased scrutiny over its AI-powered chatbots scrapping content for training. The Times lawsuit is closely monitored by media executives as it could set a precedent for copyright infringement in the new era of rapidly developing AI systems.

The Hill has reached out to Microsoft and OpenAI for comment.

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