OpenAI, a leading artificial intelligence company, has filed a motion in federal court seeking to dismiss key elements of a lawsuit brought by The New York Times Company. The Times sued OpenAI and its partner Microsoft, alleging that they infringed on its copyrights by using millions of its articles to train A.I. technologies like the chatbot ChatGPT.
In response, OpenAI argued that ChatGPT is not a substitute for a subscription to The New York Times and that people do not use it to access Times articles. The company also did not dispute that it used The Times’s works without permission, but claimed that it did not violate copyright laws.
The lawsuit is significant as it is the first major American media company to sue OpenAI over copyright issues related to its written works. Other groups, including novelists and computer programmers, have also filed copyright suits against companies that build generative A.I. technologies.
OpenAI’s defense hinges on the argument that it is legal to use copyrighted material to train A.I. systems and that it is not reproducing the material in its entirety. The company also accused The Times of paying someone to hack their chatbot to generate anomalous results.
Ultimately, OpenAI and the other defendants in the lawsuit believe they will prevail, stating that no one, not even The New York Times, can monopolize facts or the rules of language. The outcome of this legal battle could have far-reaching implications for the use of copyrighted material in A.I. technologies.
