Microsoft and OpenAI are being sued by eight US newspapers for using their labor to train AI systems.
Reuters reported on Wednesday, May 1, that a consortium of newspapers owned by investment firm Alden Global Capital's MediaNews consortium filed a lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI in a federal court in New York on Tuesday.
According to the lawsuit, the businesses should pay the newspapers damages for using copyrighted content illegally.
Reuters reported on Wednesday, May 1, that a consortium of newspapers owned by investment firm Alden Global Capital's MediaNews consortium filed a lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI in a federal court in New York on Tuesday.
The complaint was filed for "misusing reporters’ work to train their generative artificial-intelligence systems" by publications including The New York Daily News, The Chicago Tribune, The Denver Post, and five other newspapers, according to the report.
The newspapers are allegedly owed money by Microsoft Copilot and OpenAI for their "unlawful use of copyrighted newspaper content" in the development and management of their GenAI products. As mentioned in the document, Microsoft and OpenAI, however, continue to refute any misconduct.
According to the lawsuit, which was obtained by Reuters, Microsoft and OpenAI's computers are able to replicate the newspapers' copyrighted content verbatim when given the opportunity. The case also includes instances of ChatGPT fabricating articles that are falsely credited to newspapers, endangering the credibility of those publications.
The New York Times and other news organizations have filed similar cases against Microsoft and OpenAI, in which Microsoft has invested billions of dollars, according to Reuters as well.
In order to get data for training AI models and developing the technology, tech companies including OpenAI, Google, and Meta "cut corners, ignored corporate policies, and debated bending the law,"
For example, Google may have violated video copyrights when it transcribed YouTube films in order to collect text data for its AI models.
According to Reuters, copyright owners are bringing "several potential landmark cases" against internet corporations over how they train AI systems with content, in addition to the newspaper litigation.
The website quoted MediaNews lawyer Steven Lieberman as saying that OpenAI owed its success to the efforts of others.
On Tuesday, however, an OpenAI representative defended the company's procedures, noting that it "takes great care in our products and design process to support news organizations."
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