The American daily New York Times on Wednesday launched proceedings in a federal court in New York against OpenAI, creator of the ChatGPT software, as well as Microsoft, its main investor, for copyright infringement.
“As the complaint explains, Microsoft and OpenAI used our work to develop and market their generative artificial intelligence (AI) products without permission from the Times », Declared to AFP a spokesperson for the daily, considering that it is indeed a “violation of copyright in terms of content and journalistic work”.
According to the complaint, the newspaper estimates the damage suffered, in fact and from a legal point of view, at “several billions of dollars”.
“Defendants’ generative AI relies on massive learning models that were built by copying and using millions of articles from the Times protected by copyright,” adds the daily.
Even more Microsoft and OpenAI “gave the contents of the Times particular importance in the construction of their learning model, highlighting a preference which recognizes the value of this work”.
The daily also explains that it has tried to negotiate with the two companies in order to “receive adequate compensation for the use of its content”, without success so far, however.
“Copyright laws protect our journalism. If Microsoft and OpenAI want to use our work for commercial use, the law requires them to ask permission first. They did not do it,” insisted a spokesperson.
Questioned by AFP, neither Microsoft nor OpenAI have yet made any comments.
In mid-December, OpenAI reached an agreement with the German group Axel Springer, publisher of the tabloid Bildto pay him to provide group content in responses to ChatGPT user queries.
Under the terms of this partnership, presented as unprecedented by the two players, users asking a question to ChatGPT will receive in response summaries of articles published by Axel Springer brands, in particular Politico, Business Insiderand the daily newspapers Bild And World.
Since the launch of ChatGPT a year ago, the giants of Silicon Valley have been engaged in a frantic race for so-called generative AI. This makes it possible to obtain texts, images or lines of code of a level equivalent to those produced by humans, upon simple query in everyday language, models trained mainly thanks to the mass of content present online.