The New York Times has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, claiming the tech companies used their articles to train chatbots that now threaten journalists’ jobs.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, alleges that the companies illegally passed “millions of items” to Microsoft’s Bing Chat and OpenAI’s ChatGPT to develop their products. “This action is intended to hold them accountable for the billions of dollars in legal and actual damages they owe for illegally copying and using the Times’ exceptionally valuable works.the complaint said.

According to the lawsuit, these two companies are “trying to take advantage of the Times’ massive investments in journalism by using it to create substitute products without permission or payment.”

With the lawsuit, The New York Times, one of the most respected press groups in the United States, took a more combative approach to the sudden rise of AI chatbots, unlike other media groups such as Germany’s Axel Springer or the Associated Press agency (AP ) that entered into content agreements with OpenAI.

The New York Times is seeking damages, as well as an order for the companies to stop using the content and destroy data already collected. Moreover, it brings the copyright debate in the age of artificial intelligence to the forefront.

While it doesn’t ask for a specific amount, the Times claims the breach could have cost “billions of dollars in legal and actual damages.”

Contacted by AFP, OpenAI and Microsoft provided no comment.

Microsoft is a major investor in OpenAI and has implemented the power of AI into its own products after launching ChatGPT last year.

The AI ​​models that power Microsoft’s ChatGPT and Copilot (formerly Bing). They were trained for years with content available on the Internet, under the assumption that it was possible to use it without requiring permission or compensation to the sources of origin.

But the lawsuit, filed in federal court in New York, argued that the Times’ illegal use of labor to build AI products created a potential rival and threatened the Times’ ability to deliver quality journalism.

“These tools were created and continue to leverage independent journalism and content that is only available because we and our colleagues report, edit and verify it at great cost and with significant experience,” the Times spokesperson pointed out.

Wave of lawsuits

The news group said it tried to strike a content deal with OpenAI and Microsoft, but the companies insisted their technology was “transformative” and therefore did not need a commercial deal.

Emerging artificial intelligence giants are facing a wave of lawsuits over their use of internet content to build their AI systems, which create content based on simple cues.

Last year, “Game of Thrones” author George RR Martin and other successful fiction writers filed a class action lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the startup of violating their copyright to make ChatGPT possible.

Universal and other music labels have sued artificial intelligence company Anthropic in US court for using copyrighted texts to train their artificial intelligence systems to generate answers to user questions.

US photo distributor Getty Images has accused Stability AI of capitalizing on its and its partners’ images to create a visual AI that creates original images upon simple request.

As lawsuits pile up, Microsoft and Google – another industry giant – continue to have announced that they will provide protectionequivalent to customers being sued for copyright infringement over content generated by their AI. (JO)