New York Times files case against Microsoft, open AI for using its content to train chatbots

In response to the threat artificial intelligence poses to the news industry, The New York Times filed a federal lawsuit on Wednesday against Microsoft and OpenAI to stop using its articles as training material for chatbots.

The Times claims that the companies are posing threat in making a living by essentially taking billions of dollars worth of work from its journalists. In certain instances, the chatbots are using Times articles verbatim to give answers to the individuals.

Following what appears to be a breakdown in negotiations between the newspaper and the two companies, which started in April, the newspaper filed a lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan.

“These bots compete with the content they are trained on,” said Ian B. Crosby, partner and lead counsel at Susman Godfrey, which is representing The Times.

As per PTI, an OpenAI spokesperson said in a prepared statement that the company respects the rights of content creators and is “committed” to working with them to help them benefit from the technology and new revenue models.

“Our ongoing conversations with the New York Times have been productive and moving forward constructively, so we are surprised and disappointed with this development,” the spokesperson said. “We’re hopeful that we will find a mutually beneficial way to work together, as we are doing with many other publishers.”

Microsoft did not respond to requests for comment.

To train generative AI chatbots, artificial intelligence companies scrape publicly available online content, including news articles. In order to help the large language models develop a solid command of language and grammar and provide accurate answers, they are also trained on the basis of human-written materials.

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