Three major media outlets, Raw Story, Alternet, and The Intercept, have taken legal action against OpenAI for copyright infringement, sparking a new battle in the ongoing debate over the use of artificial intelligence in journalism.
The lawsuits, filed in a New York federal court, allege that OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot was trained using copyrighted works from journalists without proper attribution. The companies are seeking damages and asking OpenAI to remove all copyrighted articles from its data training sets.
In a bold statement, John Byrne, the CEO of Raw Story, declared, “It is time that news organizations fight back against Big Tech’s continued attempts to monetize other people’s work. Big Tech has decimated journalism. It’s time that publishers take a stand.”
OpenAI and Microsoft, a partner of OpenAI that developed its own chatbot called Bing, have not yet responded to the lawsuits. However, both companies have previously expressed a desire to work with publishers to ensure fair compensation for their work.
The lawsuits come in the wake of similar legal action taken by The New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft. The growing use of generative AI technology has raised concerns about the use of copyrighted material and its impact on the creative industries.
The three publications suing OpenAI emphasized the importance of protecting journalists’ work and cited the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in their lawsuits. Roxanne Cooper, Raw Story’s publisher, stated, “Raw Story’s copyright-protected journalism is the result of significant efforts of human journalists who report the news. Rather than license that work, OpenAI taught ChatGPT to ignore journalists’ copyrights and hide its use of copyright-protected material.”
As the debate over AI and copyright infringement continues to unfold, these lawsuits represent a significant moment in the fight to protect the rights of journalists and creators in the digital age.
