New York Times sues OpenAI and MS for copyright infringement

The New York Times (NYT) has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, the developer of the generative artificial intelligence (AI) conversational chatbot ChatGPT, and its investor, Microsoft (MS), accusing them of unauthorized use of copyrighted material and demanding a multi-billion-dollar compensation. This marks the first lawsuit by a major U.S. media outlet against the practice of "free training," where tech companies use vast amounts of data without proper compensation to the creators to train AI.

In a filing submitted to the Manhattan Federal Court on Wednesday (local time), the NYT claimed that "MS and OpenAI used millions of articles accumulated by NYT over 172 years without permission for the creation of their chatbot," asserting that they attempted to benefit from NYT's substantial investments in journalism without due compensation. The lawsuit further presented cases where ChatGPT memorized all NYT-exclusive articles and used them as evidence, pointing out that AI is "competing with the press and threatening the future of the (media) industry." While the NYT did not specify the exact compensation amount, they argued that responsibility should be taken for "legal and actual damages in the billions of dollars."

On Thursday, the Korea Newspaper Association also submitted an opinion to the Fair Trade Commission, arguing that it is unfair for Naver's generative AI, HyperCLOVA X, to utilize news content for training purposes.


Hyoun-Soo Kim kimhs@donga.com