The Center for Investigative Reporting, known as the country’s oldest nonprofit newsroom, has taken legal action against OpenAI and Microsoft, accusing them of copyright infringement. In a lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York, the CIR claimed that OpenAI used their valuable content without permission or compensation. The CIR alleges that OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot scraped the web for information, often directly pulling copy from news stories without acknowledgment or authorization.
Monika Bauerlein, CEO of the nonprofit, accused OpenAI and Microsoft of engaging in “free rider behavior.” She stated that the defendants used the stories produced by the CIR to improve their product without seeking permission or offering any form of compensation. The CIR also claimed that OpenAI trained ChatGPT to ignore copyright laws, further exacerbating the issue.
The CIR is seeking damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, either in the form of actual damages and profits obtained through copyright infringement or statutory damages. The organization is asking for no less than $750 per infringed work and $2,500 per violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Despite the legal action, OpenAI and Microsoft have yet to respond to the allegations.
The lawsuit filed by the CIR is part of a broader trend within the news industry to protect its content from being exploited by AI-driven technologies. As AI-generated content becomes more prevalent, news organizations are finding themselves in a constant battle to safeguard their intellectual property. This struggle is exacerbated by the challenges faced by the news industry in generating revenue through traditional means such as advertising and subscriptions.
The New York Times, along with the Chicago Tribune and the New York Daily News, have also filed lawsuits against OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement related to their journalistic content. In addition to news outlets, a group of prominent authors, including Jonathan Franzen and John Grisham, have sued OpenAI for allegedly using their work to train AI models without permission.
Despite the legal challenges, some news organizations have chosen to collaborate with OpenAI. Time magazine and News Corp. have both announced partnerships with OpenAI to access and use their content in the development of AI models. Reddit has also joined forces with OpenAI to train its AI models using Reddit content.
The legal battle between news outlets and OpenAI underscores the complexities of intellectual property rights in the era of AI-driven technologies. As the news industry continues to grapple with the challenges of securing revenue and protecting its content, the outcome of these lawsuits will undoubtedly shape the future relationship between journalism and artificial intelligence.
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