Check out about OpenAI and Microsoft facing a legal battle with news giants
According to Axios, the lawsuit was filed Tuesday in New York’s Southern District, the latest in a long-running battle between news outlets and tech giants over the use of copyright-protected material to train AI models.
The newspapers named in the suit are among the most well-known in Alden’s portfolio of newspapers. Among them are the New York (NY Daily News), Chicago (Tribune), Orlando (Orland Sentinel), South Florida (Sun Sentinel), San Jose (Mercury News), Denver (Post), Orange County (Register), St. Paul (Pioneer Press), and Washington (Post). The New York Times is also named in the suit, but it’s being defended by the law firm that’s also representing the New York (New York Times) in its case against OpenAI and Microsoft.
The basis of the complaint in the legal battle with news giants is the allegation that OpenAI and Microsoft have been “stealing millions of the publishers’ copyrighted articles without authorization or payment” in order to commercialize their artificial intelligence products, including ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and others. The newspapers claim that the tech firms have removed necessary metadata, including the names and titles of journalists, from the material they use to train their artificial intelligence models.
The lawsuit also points to several instances in which ChatGPT falsified or misrepresented information. For example, it claims that the Denver Post published research claiming smoking could treat asthma. The newspaper denies this allegation. ChatGPT also claims that the Chicago Tribune erroneously cited a “recovered” and “potentially dangerous” recommendation for one of its baby loungers.
These cases of “hallucinations,” as they are known in the AI world, have raised questions about the damage such misinformation can cause to established news organizations. The newspapers allege OpenAI and Microsoft are using their trademarks without permission, further exacerbating the infringement.
The implications of this case could reverberate across the entire news industry and the way we pay for news in the era of artificial intelligence. Generative AI tools are threatening to choke off the flow of traffic to news sites, and publishers are struggling to cope with the loss of search engine advertising revenue, which has been a vital source of income for two decades.
While some news organizations (such as the Financial Times) have decided to cut deals with AI firms that allow them to use their content for millions of dollars a year, others (such as Alden Global Capital’s newspapers) have decided to take legal action. The fact that these significant newspapers, alongside the New York Times, have joined forces to take on OpenAI and Microsoft strengthens the case for copyright infringement. It also sets the stage for an epic legal battle that could upend the rules for how news publishers engage with AI companies.
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