OpenAI and Microsoft face fresh lawsuit from US news organisation
Center for Investigative Reporting alleges tech giants copied tens of thousands of journalism works | Non-profit joins other large US newspapers in filing copyright suits over AI model training.
The oldest non-profit newsroom in the US has become the latest media company to sue ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that the tech companies copied its journalism to train large language models (LLMs) without permission.
Yesterday (June 27), the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) joined the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Denver Post and other US newspapers in taking legal action over alleged copyright infringement by the AI companies.
In its complaint filed at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, the news publisher said that Open AI and Microsoft had copied, used, abridged and displayed its content without permission, authorisation or compensation.
The lawsuit asked for actual damages and defendants’ profits, or damages of no less than $750 per infringed work and $2,500 for every violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
CIR was founded in 1977 and owns brands including Mother Jones, Reveal and CIR Studios.
It told the court that the defendants had greatly benefitted from CIR’s “distinct voice in the marketplace”, as it provided a unique perspective particularly regarding investigative topics impacting diverse communities.
“If limited to a homogenous dataset, defendants’ large language models would be stunted in growth and power,” CIR said.
“Their success depends on content creators like CIR and other members of the news media that are unique in their style and voice.”
The non-profit newsroom alleged OpenAI and Microsoft had downloaded tens and thousands of its articles without permission.
ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot had provided responses to users that regurgitated verbatim or nearly verbatim copyright-protected works of journalism without the relevant author, title or copyright information, according to the complaint.
CIR said that Microsoft had invested billions of dollars in OpenAI Global and would own a 49% stake in the company after its investment had been repaid.
It pointed to a 2023 interview in which Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella had stated that “[i]f OpenAI disappeared tomorrow”, Microsoft could still “continue the innovation” alone because, among other reasons, “we have the data, we have everything.”
Growing list of suits
ChatGPT launched in 2022, kicking off a race among established and new tech companies to produce generative AI tools.
This was swiftly filled by a growing list of copyright infringement suits from a mixture of publishers, book authors, and artists, with Microsoft, Nvidia, Midjourney, Anthropic, Stability AI and DeviantArt all targeted.
Generative AI music services Suno and Udio are among the latest to face a complaint, this time from some of the world's largest music labels.
The FT, Associated Press, and Reddit are among a similarly growing number of companies that have signed licensing deals with tech companies, agreeing to the use of their data to train generative AI tools.
In May, it was reported that OpenAI and News Corp had signed a deal for an undisclosed sum to access content from the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the Times and the Sunday Times.
Reddit has changed the settings on its site in a bid to prevent unauthorised scraping of its content.
CIR said the defendants were in licensing talks with other copyright owners in the news industry, but had offered no compensation for use of its own works.
Chicago-based law firm Loevy + Loevy is representing CIR in its complaint against OpenAI and Microsoft.
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