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The New York Times has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that the companies used millions of its copyrighted articles to train AI models without authorization. The suit claims that these models compete with the newspaper by reproducing content verbatim and generating inaccurate information attributed to the Times, which harms the outlet's brand and reduces its advertising and subscription revenue.
The New York Times alleges that OpenAI and Microsoft used millions of its articles without permission to train AI models, including ChatGPT. The lawsuit claims the companies scraped and reproduced copyrighted content without compensation, in turn undermining the Times’s business and competing with its journalism. Some AI outputs allegedly regurgitate Times articles verbatim. The lawsuit seeks damages and demands the destruction of AI models trained on its content.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
AI systems capable of creating economic or cultural value, including through reproduction of human innovation or creativity (e.g., art, music, writing, coding, invention), destabilizing economic and social systems that rely on human effort. The ubiquity of AI-generated content may lead to reduced appreciation for human skills, disruption of creative and knowledge-based industries, and homogenization of cultural experiences.
Also classified as
The AI systems generated hallucinations that fabricated information and falsely attributed it to the Times, causing brand damage.
The incident involves the unauthorized reproduction and exploitation of the Times's creative and journalistic works, directly competing with and devaluing their human effort and business model.
Human
Due to a decision or action made by humans
Intentional
Due to an expected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed
The core of the dispute stems from intentional human decisions by OpenAI and Microsoft to train their models on copyrighted articles without authorization, resulting in post-deployment competition and brand damage.
Added categories peak at 4: Severe (Epistemic Harm, Indirect)
A major civil lawsuit filed by The New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft alleging unauthorized use of copyrighted articles to train AI models. While raising critical questions about intellectual property, AI training data, and epistemic reliability, the incident remains a domestic commercial dispute with minor direct national security implications.
The report describes ChatGPT and Bing Chat as automated chatbots and search features that respond to user prompts, generating text and reproducing search results to assist users.
Limited Risk: The systems involved are chatbots (ChatGPT and Bing Chat) which fall under Risk Level 3 due to transparency obligations for conversational AI and generative content.
The systems are explicitly described as automated chatbots (ChatGPT and Bing Chat) designed to answer user queries and generate text.
The reports provide clear, detailed, and consistent accounts of the lawsuit filed by The New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft, including specific examples of verbatim reproduction and hallucinations.
None
Technology
Verbatim Output Generation
GPT-4 outputs copyrighted articles word-for-word, bypassing paywalls.
AI Hallucinations
Models attribute false information to NYT, damaging brand reputation.
Stripping Referral Links
Browse with Bing reproduces Wirecutter content without referral links.
Data Inputs
Unauthorized Web Scraping
Scraping millions of copyrighted NYT articles without consent or payment.
Lack of Dataset Transparency
Companies refuse to reveal training sources used in newer models.
Historical Data Ingestion
Decades of online catalogs scraped before blockers could be installed.
Human Factors
User Substitution
Users get answers from chatbots instead of visiting publisher websites.
Impasse in Negotiations
Parties failed to reach an amicable agreement on licensing terms.
Process and Methods
Inadequate Training Safeguards
Lack of mechanisms to prevent memorization and reproduction of texts.
Ineffective Content Attribution
Chatbots fail to provide proper links to original source articles.
Management
Prioritizing Growth Over Rights
Tech firms built highly lucrative tools using uncompensated creative work.
Inadequate Risk Assessment
Failure to resolve copyright issues before commercializing AI products.
Regulatory Environment
Unresolved Fair Use Contours
Unclear legal boundaries of generative AI training under copyright law.
Lack of AI Compensation Standards
No standard regulatory framework for compensating creators for AI training.
AI system involved
Identified by automated extraction; can differ from the alleged developers above.
