DOJ sides with OpenAI over NY Times in lawsuit alleging AI copyright infringement | Latest Tech News
The Justice Department is backing OpenAI in its high-stakes legal battle with the New York Times, arguing in a court submitting that utilizing copyrighted content to prepare artificial intelligence fashions doesn’t violate the law.
The Times first sued OpenAI and key investor Microsoft in December 2023, alleging in Manhattan federal court that the ChatGPT creator had used “millions” of its copyrighted articles to construct AI merchandise that immediately compete with the newspaper. It is one of a number of lawsuits accusing OpenAI and other AI giants of copyright infringement.
“The United States has a strong interest in this Court rejecting any argument that training LLMs on copyrighted texts violates copyright law,” DOJ officers wrote in the court transient revealed Wednesday.
The New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement. AFP via Getty Images
To justify its stance, the DOJ argued that an adversarial ruling in the Times’ favor would hamper development of AI fashions that “shall be important for US national security capabilities, in half because overseas adversaries received’t be held back by copyright law.
The company also expressed concern that a ruling against OpenAI “would hamper competition in the market for LLMs, because only the largest technology companies might have the capital necessary to pay licensing fees.”
“It would be problematic—and legally incorrect—to impose broad copyright liability that would generally render training of AI models impermissible without licensing,” the DOJ added.
A Times spokesperson said the “administration is siding with a handful of trillion-dollar AI companies at the expense of the countless American creators whose work they stole.”
“Both AI and creators can thrive – AI companies simply need to pay fairly for the content that makes their products possible, as copyright law requires,” the spokesperson said in a assertion.
“The Administration’s proposal to let companies take that content without permission or compensation would undermine the sustainability of the human-created content that a healthy society depends on, and which AI needs to function.”
OpenAI is accused of training its AI fashions on copyrighted materials. CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images
The DOJ’s assertion was “surprising” – in half because it appeared to contradict the effective print of the administration’s own AI framework, according to Evan Swarztrauber, a former FCC adviser and principal at CorePoint Strategies.
The framework, launched in March, called on Congress to contemplate implementing collective licensing agreements that would require AI corporations to pretty compensate media companies for their content.
Swarztrauber speculated that the obvious contradiction “may be the result of a disconnect between the DOJ and the White House.”
“The Administration’s AI framework acknowledges the complexity of copyright litigation, the legitimacy of rights-holder interests, and the importance of licensing to compensate workers,” he said. “The DOJ, in contrast, seems to take an anti-licensing stance while arguing nearly all AI training on copyrighted works is protected.”
News retailers and other online creators have warned for years that AI corporations are successfully stealing content without correct credit or compensation – with some describing the state of affairs as an existential risk to the media industry.
The Justice Department cited national security and the significance of AI development as key causes for its stance. REUTERS
The News/Media Alliance, a commerce group that represents more than 2,000 retailers including The Post, expressed concern over the DOJ’s submitting.
“We understand the draw of economic investment that AI companies are promising, but strict application of the law is required by the courts, and we continue to believe the NYT has a winning case,” Danielle Coffey, president and CEO of the News/Media Alliance, told The Post.
“We would also note the enormous economic and societal contribution of the creative community to America,” Coffey added.
The White House declined to remark.
Representatives for OpenAI didn’t immediately return a request for remark on the submitting.
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