The New York Times copyright lawsuit against OpenAI will move forward after a federal judge refused to dismiss the case, which alleges that the company’s system stole the newspaper’s content when using it to train its AI models.
U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein said she will issue a ruling “expeditiously” in the landmark case which may determine the future of the AI industry.
OpenAI said in a statement to TheWrap: “Hundreds of millions of people around the world rely on ChatGPT to improve their daily lives, inspire creativity, and to solve hard problems. We welcome the court’s dismissal of many of these claims and look forward to making it clear that we build our AI models using publicly available data, in a manner grounded in fair use, and supportive of innovation. We also collaborate with web and news publishers, offering ways to express their preferences with how their sites and content work with our products, and to display and attribute their content in ChatGPT search.”
OpenAI previously argued that if it is not allowed to use copyrighted material for free, that the US will lose its advantage over China.
OpenAI, led by CEO Sam Altman also proposed and investing in the infrastructure needed to scale America’s AI industry — something that will allow the U.S. government to create and support “hundreds of thousands of jobs,” OpenAI argued.
In a 2023 campaign speech, President Trump called AI “the new oil,” saying, ““We have to make sure we dominate it.”
Earlier this month, multiple papers owned by Alden Global Capital, including the the Boston Herald and Chicago Tribune, ran editorials calling OpenAI’s proposal a “license to steal” copyrighted material from publishers.
On March 15, more than 400 creatives and executives in Hollywood signed an open letter to the Trump Administration, calling for the White House to reject OpenAI and Google’s proposals for less stringent copyright rules. Signees included Gordon-Levitt,Ben Stiller, Aubrey Plaza, Cate Blanchett, Natasha Lyonne, Chris Rock, Paul McCartney, Judd Apatow and Ava Duvernay.
The New York Daily News has also sued OpenAI for using their articles without permission to train ChatGPT. Media companies like News Corp. and Vox Media, meanwhile, have reached content-sharing deals with OpenAI.
The Times filed suit in December 2023: They claim “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages” related to the “unlawful copying and use” of the newspaper’s “uniquely valuable works.” It also called for the destruction of chatbot models and training data that use copyrighted material from The Times.
