New York Times sues Microsoft, OpenAI for copying its content through AI models

The New York Times has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI, alleging that the companies engaged in the unlawful use of copyrighted content to develop and train their generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools..The lawsuit filed through Susman Godfrey LLP and Rothwell, Figg, Ernst & Manbeck, PC underlines that Microsoft's Bing Chat (now rebranded as Copilot) and OpenAI's ChatGPT extensively copied and incorporated millions of copyrighted news articles, opinion pieces, investigations, reviews and other works from The New York Times..The publication claims that the defendants' GenAI tools not only closely mimic its content, but also attribute false information to the media company. Furthermore, it alleges that the use of Microsoft's Bing search index generates responses containing verbatim excerpts and detailed summaries of NYT articles, undermining the relationship with readers and impacting subscription, licensing, advertising and affiliate revenue.The suit contends that Microsoft's market capitalization has increased by a trillion dollars in the past year, driven in part by the deployment of language learning models (LLMs) and OpenAI's release of ChatGPT has similarly contributed to its valuation reaching as high as $90 billion..The lawsuit, filed before a district court in New York, comes after months of unsuccessful negotiations, with NYT claiming that despite efforts to reach a fair agreement, the defendants insist on their conduct being protected as "fair use."The suit disputes this, arguing,"...there is nothing “transformative” about using The Times’s content without payment to create products that substitute for The Times and steal audiences away from it. Because the outputs of Defendants’GenAI models compete with and closely mimic the inputs used to train them, copying Times works for that purpose is not fair use.".The lawsuit, without specifying the quantum, has sought substantial damages, holding the defendants responsible for the alleged unlawful copying and use of NYT's valuable works.