The Battle Between AI and Copyright Law: The New York Times vs. OpenAI

Wednesday - January 31 2024, 03:31 UTC - 9 months ago

The New York Times has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI alleging that their AI tool ChatGPT was unlawfully trained on copyrighted articles and contains direct language from them. The Times is seeking the destruction of ChatGPT and the company's training data, but it is unlikely that the court will order this. It may instead lead to a settlement or a ruling in favor of OpenAI based on the copyright doctrine of "fair use". This case highlights the ongoing battle between AI and copyright law.

In a surprising turn of events, The New York Times has filed a high-profile lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the company of copyright infringement through its AI tool ChatGPT. This marks the first time that copyright law has been used to target AI models.

The lawsuit, filed on Dec. 27, 2023, alleges that ChatGPT was unlawfully trained on vast amounts of text from The Times' articles, and that the AI's output contains language directly taken from their articles. The Times is not only seeking monetary compensation, but also the destruction of ChatGPT and the company's training data. This raises the question: Can a federal court actually order the destruction of an AI model like ChatGPT? .

Under copyright law, courts do have the power to issue destruction orders. This is similar to the case of vinyl records, where the law allows for the destruction of counterfeit records, their production equipment, and master disks used to create them. The idea is that there is no legitimate reason for a counterfeiter to keep these items, as it would only enable more lawbreaking.

However, this has never been applied to AI models before. But this may change as copyright law has been increasingly open to the idea of targeting AI. In fact, the Federal Trade Commission has utilized algorithmic disgorgement, forcing companies to not only delete unlawfully collected data, but also any AI models trained on that data.

Despite all of this, it is unlikely that ChatGPT will be destroyed. The most likely outcome is a settlement between the two parties, leading to the dismissal of the lawsuit. The court may also side with OpenAI, stating that ChatGPT falls under the copyright doctrine of "fair use" due to its transformative nature and the fact that it is not a direct competitor of The Times. Ultimately, this case highlights the ongoing battle between AI and copyright law, and the potential implications for both parties involved.