The New York Times Sues OpenAI and Microsoft Over AI Models
Lawsuits are never exactly a lovefest, but the copyright fight between The New York Times and both OpenAI and Microsoft is getting especially contentious.
The Allegations
This week, the Times alleged that OpenAI’s engineers inadvertently erased data the paper’s team spent more than 150 hours extracting as potential evidence.
Data Erasure
OpenAI was able to recover much of the data, but the Times’ legal team says it’s still missing the original file names and folder structure. According to a declaration filed to the court Wednesday by Jennifer B. Maisel, a lawyer for the newspaper, this means the information “cannot be used to determine where the news plaintiffs’ copied articles” may have been incorporated into OpenAI’s artificial intelligence models.
Reactions
“We disagree with the characterizations made and will file our response soon,” OpenAI spokesperson Jason Deutrom told WIRED in a statement. The New York Times declined to comment.
The Background
The Times filed its copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft last year, alleging that the companies had illegally used its articles to train artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT. The case is one of many ongoing legal battles between AI companies and publishers, including a similar lawsuit filed by the Daily News being handled by some of the same lawyers.
The Discovery Process
The Times’ case is currently in discovery, which means both sides are turning over requested documents and information that could become evidence. As part of the process, OpenAI was required by the court to show the Times its training data, which is a big deal—OpenAI has never publicly revealed exactly what information was used to build its AI models.
Data Sandbox
To disclose it, OpenAI created what the court is calling a “sandbox” of two “virtual machines” that the Times’ lawyers could sift through. In her declaration, Maisel said that OpenAI engineers had “erased” data organized by the Times’ team on one of these machines.
The Consequences
According to Maisel’s filing, OpenAI acknowledged that the information had been deleted, and attempted to address the issue shortly after it was alerted to it earlier this month. But when the paper’s lawyers looked at the “restored” data, it was too disorganized, forcing them “to recreate their work from scratch using significant person-hours and computer processing time,” several other Times lawyers said in a letter filed to the judge the same day as Maisel’s declaration.
Conclusion
The copyright fight between The New York Times and OpenAI and Microsoft is a contentious one, with both sides trading accusations and counter-accusations. The outcome of the case remains to be seen, but it is clear that the use of AI models in the publishing industry is a complex and highly regulated issue.
FAQs
Q: What is the dispute about?
A: The dispute is about the use of The New York Times’ articles to train OpenAI’s artificial intelligence models, without permission.
Q: What happened to the data?
A: According to The New York Times, OpenAI engineers inadvertently erased data that the paper’s team had spent more than 150 hours extracting as potential evidence.
Q: Has OpenAI acknowledged the data erasure?
A: Yes, OpenAI has acknowledged that the information had been deleted, and attempted to address the issue shortly after it was alerted to it earlier this month.
Q: What is the significance of the discovery process?
A: The discovery process is a critical part of the lawsuit, as both sides are required to turn over requested documents and information that could become evidence. In this case, OpenAI was required to show The New York Times its training data, which is a big deal.
Q: What are the implications of the case?
A: The outcome of the case could have significant implications for the use of AI models in the publishing industry, and the regulation of copyright in the digital age.
