The New York Times has filed a lawsuit against Open AI and Microsoft for copyright infringement. The Times claims that Open AI is using its content to train automated chatbots without permission, constituting unlawful copying. This is the first time a major media organization has sued an AI platform, although there are other pending cases involving IP owners such as Sarah Silverman and John Grisham. The lawsuit seeks billions of dollars in damages and the destruction of chatbot and training models that use copyrighted material from The Times. The Times argues that Open AI’s use of its work to create AI products that compete with it threatens its ability to provide quality journalism. Open AI’s generative AI tools, which train chatbots on large data sets, allegedly use The Times’ content without payment, substituting for The Times and stealing its audience. Other authors, including Michael Chabon and David Henry Hwang, have also filed lawsuits against AI platforms for infringing on their works. These cases revolve around the use of copyrighted material as training data for AI software programs. In July, Sarah Silverman and other authors sued Open AI and Meta for copyright infringement.
