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The use of copyright material in training AI models such as ChatGPT has always been a matter of hot debate. Now, in a recent development, OpenAI has found itself in hot water with The New York Times, which is reportedly contemplating legal action to safeguard its intellectual property rights pertaining to journalistic content.
As reported by NPR, the root of the issue lies in OpenAI’s use of web-scraping bots to extract information, a practice that extends beyond materials that are free of copyright. This prompted The New York Times to modify its terms of service, explicitly forbidding the application of its articles and visual content for AI language model training. However, this move has also set the stage for potential legal action, as the publication aims to secure a licensing agreement, which would require OpenAI to provide compensation to The New York Times for the integration of its news stories into AI tools.
Additionally, the publication also argues that the chatbot poses a direct threat to the newspaper itself, as it generates responses based on the original reporting from the editorial team. This not only undermines the team’s efforts in reporting on specific topics but also poses a significant threat to the newspaper’s survival, especially as companies like Google and Microsoft prominently feature these AI-generated chatbot responses ahead of conventional web pages.
Legal action likely
Based on insider sources, the talks have escalated to the point where the newspaper is seriously considering legal action, a prospect that could prove detrimental to OpenAI. This is because if the court rules in favour of The New York Times, OpenAI would be compelled to erase the entire ChatGPT dataset and reconstruct its AI model exclusively using content for which it holds valid rights. Moreover, experts argue that each instance of copyrighted material used in training the AI models could potentially result in a financial liability of up to $150,000.
“If you’re copying millions of works, you can see how that becomes a number that becomes potentially fatal for a company. Copyright law is a sword that’s going to hang over the heads of AI companies for several years unless they figure out how to negotiate a solution,” said Daniel Gervais, co-director of the intellectual property program at Vanderbilt University.