In the lawsuit it filed just after Christmas against OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright violations, The New York Times said it tried to strike a deal with the companies over their use of its content in their generative AI tools but the effort came to nothing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Times reached out to Microsoft and OpenAI in April 2023 to raise intellectual property concerns and explore the possibility of an amicable resolution,\u201d The Times said. \u201cThese efforts have not produced a resolution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That resolution might come now, thanks to the lawsuit, Cory Weinberg, deputy bureau chief of The Information, thinks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou should view this for what it is,\u201d the tech commentator said in The Briefing newsletter. \u201cA negotiating tactic. It would be far too risky for The Times to go to trial over how the fair use doctrine \u2014 which allows limited use of copyrighted material \u2014 applies to artificial intelligence models.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s not even clear copyright law is the best law to apply to address content producers\u2019 concerns about the use of their work, James Grimmelmann, professor of digital and information law at Cornell, told Axios. The issue is too big for that. It\u2019s a societal issue that needs a policy solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCopyright law is not really the way to worry about the big societal effects\u201d of AI, Grimmelmann told Axios. \u201cWe shouldn\u2019t be using copyright law as labor policy to figure out the role of humans in a world of automation. We shouldn\u2019t be using copyright law to protect privacy or to protect against dangerous content. A copyright was not built for that.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Absent a policy solution, Grimmelmann said, companies that can use their clout as leverage will work out deals that others can\u2019t, slanting the technology in their favor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf copyright law says that some kinds of AI models are legal and others aren\u2019t, it will steer innovation down a path determined not by what uses of AI are beneficial to society but one based on irrelevant technical details of the training process,\u201d Grimmelmann said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Times lawsuit is the latest of several targeting OpenAI, which makes several versions of the natural-language AI tool ChatGPT, and Microsoft, OpenAI\u2019s biggest investor and also one of the builders of the ChatGPT infrastructure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The companies are defendants in more than one class action lawsuit brought by authors and others who say their creative work, or their personal information, has been appropriated without permission to train the AI tools. And the Federal Trade Commission has launched an investigation looking into how the companies access the data they use to train the tools. Governments in Canada, Australia, Italy, France and Spain have their own investigations going as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In The Times\u2019 case, the news company says it makes big outlays to do the quality journalism that OpenAI and Microsoft rely on to train their tools but gets nothing in return. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDefendants engaged in widescale copying from many sources, [but] they gave Times content particular emphasis when building their large language models \u2014 revealing a preference that recognizes the value of those works,\u201d The Times said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The complaint includes side-by-side comparisons of original Times content and the responses that ChatGPT generates to answer user queries. The two sides are mostly identical, supporting The Times\u2019 argument that it\u2019s losing revenue because users have no incentive to go to the original source when they can get the same thing for free using the tool. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDefendants seek to free-ride on The Times\u2019s massive investment in its journalism by using it to build substitutive products without permission or payment,\u201d the complaint says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Times is also worried about the reputational risk posed by the AI hallucinations that continue to bedevil the tools, citing instances in which ChatGPT tools inserted invented content into summaries of Times content. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Deals worked out between OpenAI and other media companies, including the Associated Press and Axel Springer, the big German publisher that owns Politico and Business Insider, don\u2019t appear to be what The Times is looking for. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Based on what the companies have disclosed about the terms, the deals aren\u2019t about licensing revenue but getting ChatPGT tools and support into the publishers\u2019 hands for their own use and ensuring their content is credited, with links, in ChatGPT answers to queries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe partnership supports Axel Springer\u2019s existing AI-driven ventures that build upon OpenAI\u2019s technology,\u201d Axel Springer said. \u201cThe collaboration also involves the use of quality content from Axel Springer media brands for advancing the training of OpenAI\u2019s sophisticated large language models.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAP will leverage OpenAI\u2019s technology and product expertise,\u201d AP said when announcing its deal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Other publishing companies have passed on that kind of partnership. Reuters, BBC and CNN are among companies that have taken steps to block OpenAI\u2019s web crawler from scraping their content. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In his analysis, Weinberg says the timing of The Times\u2019 lawsuit probably isn\u2019t accidental. It\u2019s a slow news period and OpenAI is under the spotlight from the high-profile firing, and then re-hiring, of its CEO, Sam Altman, in November. That makes this a good time to go after them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey\u2019re vulnerable to public relations pressure,\u201d Weinberg says. \u201cExpect this latest tech battle to play out in the court of public opinion as executives haggle over deal terms behind the scenes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the lawsuit it filed just after Christmas against OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright violations, The New York Times said it tried to strike a deal with the companies over their use of its content in their generative AI tools but the effort came to nothing. \u201cThe Times reached out to Microsoft and OpenAI in April 2023 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22833,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"rttpg_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Untitled-13.jpg",900,506,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Untitled-13.jpg",900,506,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Untitled-13.jpg",900,506,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Untitled-13-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Untitled-13-300x169.jpg",300,169,true],"large":["https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Untitled-13.jpg",900,506,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Untitled-13.jpg",900,506,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Untitled-13.jpg",900,506,false],"post-thumbnail":["https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Untitled-13.jpg",747,420,false],"graptor-sq-xs":["https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Untitled-13.jpg",100,56,false]},"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"Admin CG","author_link":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/author\/admin-cg\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"news<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"In the lawsuit it filed just after Christmas against OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright violations, The New York Times said it tried to strike a deal with the companies over their use of its content in their generative AI tools but the effort came to nothing. \u201cThe Times reached out to Microsoft and OpenAI in April 2023…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22831"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22834,"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22831\/revisions\/22834"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}