The New York Times has sued Microsoft and OpenAI for using its content to help develop artificial intelligence services, in a sign of the increasingly fraught relationship between the media and a technology that could upend the news industry.
The technology firms relied on millions of copyrighted articles to train chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other AI features, allegedly causing billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages, according to a lawsuit filed in New York on Wednesday. The Times didn’t specify its monetary demands.
OpenAI has faced criticism for scraping text widely from the web to train its popular chatbot since it debuted a year ago. While it has been sued by prominent authors, this is the first challenge to its practices by a major media organization. The startup has sought licensing deals with publishers, much like Alphabet’s Google and Meta Platforms’ Facebook have done in recent years. The Times’ lawsuit said the publisher reached out to Microsoft and OpenAI in April and couldn’t reach an amicable solution.