The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft over copyright infringement, seeking to end the companies’ practice of using its stories to train chatbots.
The newspaper filed a lawsuit in the United States federal court in Manhattan on Wednesday, alleging the companies’ powerful artificial intelligence (AI) models used millions of its articles for training without permission and saying that copyright infringements at the paper alone could be worth billions.
The Times said OpenAI and Microsoft are advancing their technology through the “unlawful use of The Times’s work to create artificial intelligence products that compete with it” and “threatens The Times’s ability to provide that service”.
Through their AI chatbots, the companies “seek to free-ride on The Times’s massive investment in its journalism by using it to build substitutive products without permission or payment”, the lawsuit said.
The Times, one of the most respected news organisations in the United States, is seeking damages as well as an order that the companies stop using its content – and destroy data already harvested.
While no sum is specifically requested, the Times alleged that the infringement could have cost “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages”.
Confrontational approach
With the suit, The New York Times chose a more confrontational approach to the sudden rise of AI chatbots, in contrast to other media groups, such as Germany’s Axel Springer or The Associated Press, which have struck content deals with OpenAI.
Microsoft, the world’s second biggest company by market capitalisation, is a major investor in OpenAI and swiftly implemented the powers of AI in its own products after the release of ChatGPT last year.
The AI models that power ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot (formerly Bing) were trained for years on content available on the internet under the assumption that it was fair to be used without need for compensation.
But the lawsuit argued that the unlawful use of the Times’s work to build artificial intelligence products threatened its ability to provide quality journalism.
“These tools were built with and continue to use independent journalism and content that is only available because we and our peers reported, edited and fact-checked it at high cost and with considerable expertise,” a spokesperson for the Times said.
The Times said it reached out to Microsoft and OpenAI in April to raise concerns about the use of its intellectual property and reach a resolution on the issue.
During the talks, the newspaper said it sought to “ensure it received fair value” for the use of its content, “facilitate the continuation of a healthy news ecosystem and help develop GenAI technology in a responsible way that benefits society and supports a well-informed public”.
“These negotiations have not led to a resolution,” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit said that content generated by ChatGPT and Copilot closely mimicked New York Times style and the paper’s content was given a privileged status in perfecting the chatbot technology.
It also said content that proved to be false was sourced incorrectly to The New York Times.
Wave of lawsuits
The newspaper joins a growing list of individuals and publishers trying to stop AI giants from using copyrighted material.
Last year, Game of Thrones author George RR Martin and other bestselling fiction writers filed a class-action lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the startup of violating their copyrights to fuel ChatGPT.
In June, more than 4,000 writers signed a letter to the CEOs of OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Meta and other AI developers, accusing them of exploitative practices in building chatbots that “mimic and regurgitate” their language, style and ideas.
Universal and other music publishers have sued artificial intelligence company Anthropic in a US court for using copyrighted lyrics to train its AI systems and generate answers to user queries.
US photo distributor Getty Images has accused Stability AI of profiting from its pictures and those of its partners to make visual AI that creates original images on simple demand.
With lawsuits piling up, Microsoft and Google have announced they would provide legal protection for customers sued for copyright infringement over content generated by their AI.
This month, European Union policymakers agreed on landmark legislation to regulate AI, which requires tech companies doing business in the EU to disclose data used to train AI systems and carry out testing of products – especially those used in high-risk applications, such as self-driving vehicles and healthcare.
In October, US President Joe Biden issued an executive order focused on AI’s impact on national security and discrimination while China has rolled out regulations requiring AI to reflect “socialist core values”.
TORONTO – Restaurant Brands International Inc. reported net income of US$357 million for its third quarter, down from US$364 million in the same quarter last year.
The company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, says its profit amounted to 79 cents US per diluted share for the quarter ended Sept. 30 compared with 79 cents US per diluted share a year earlier.
Revenue for the parent company of Tim Hortons, Burger King, Popeyes and Firehouse Subs, totalled US$2.29 billion, up from US$1.84 billion in the same quarter last year.
Consolidated comparable sales were up 0.3 per cent.
On an adjusted basis, Restaurant Brands says it earned 93 cents US per diluted share in its latest quarter, up from an adjusted profit of 90 cents US per diluted share a year earlier.
The average analyst estimate had been for a profit of 95 cents US per share, according to LSEG Data & Analytics.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – Fortis Inc. reported a third-quarter profit of $420 million, up from $394 million in the same quarter last year.
The electric and gas utility says the profit amounted to 85 cents per share for the quarter ended Sept. 30, up from 81 cents per share a year earlier.
Fortis says the increase was driven by rate base growth across its utilities, and strong earnings in Arizona largely reflecting new customer rates at Tucson Electric Power.
Revenue in the quarter totalled $2.77 billion, up from $2.72 billion in the same quarter last year.
On an adjusted basis, Fortis says it earned 85 cents per share in its latest quarter, up from an adjusted profit of 84 cents per share in the third quarter of 2023.
The average analyst estimate had been for a profit of 82 cents per share, according to LSEG Data & Analytics.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
TORONTO – Thomson Reuters reported its third-quarter profit fell compared with a year ago as its revenue rose eight per cent.
The company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, says it earned US$301 million or 67 cents US per diluted share for the quarter ended Sept. 30. The result compared with a profit of US$367 million or 80 cents US per diluted share in the same quarter a year earlier.
Revenue for the quarter totalled US$1.72 billion, up from US$1.59 billion a year earlier.
In its outlook, Thomson Reuters says it now expects organic revenue growth of 7.0 per cent for its full year, up from earlier expectations for growth of 6.5 per cent.
On an adjusted basis, Thomson Reuters says it earned 80 cents US per share in its latest quarter, down from an adjusted profit of 82 cents US per share in the same quarter last year.
The average analyst estimate had been for a profit of 76 cents US per share, according to LSEG Data & Analytics.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
