The New York Times has become the first big player in the news industry to sue OpenAI and Microsoft for using published articles to train chatbots. In a lawsuit filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, lawyers for the Times say the “unlawful copying and use of The Times’ uniquely valuable works” by the creators of ChatGPT and other A.I. technologies cost the newspaper billions in damages. “Defendants seek to free-ride on The Times’ massive investment in its journalism,” the lawsuit says, accusing the companies of using the newspaper’s content “without payment to create products that substitute for The Times and steal audiences away from it.” The lawsuit comes amid growing concerns over the effects of A.I. technologies on intellectual property, with several authors suing OpenAI earlier this year for using their books to train the popular ChatGPT chatbot.
