Eight major newspapers sue OpenAI and Microsoft for illegally using their content for AI development

Eight major newspaper publishing companies, including the Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, Sun Sentinel from South Florida, Denver Post, Orange County Register, San Jose Mercury News, Orlando Sentinel, and St. Paul Pioneer Press, have filed a collective lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft. They accuse the tech giants of unlawfully using news articles to train artificial intelligence systems such as ChatGPT without compensating the copyright holders.

According to The Washingtonpost, all eight publications are owned by the investment fund Alden Global Capital from New York. The lawsuit claims that OpenAI and Microsoft extracted materials from news articles to train their AI models, including ChatGPT, without permission and compensation to the publishers.

News publishers are increasingly concerned that AI-based chatbots and search engines, like ChatGPT and Google, could undermine their business models, leading to further layoffs and bankruptcies in an already struggling industry.

Some media companies, such as Politico, Axel Springer (owner of the Financial Times), and others, have made deals with OpenAI to display some of their content in ChatGPT responses. However, many others, including the New York Times, have filed lawsuits.

OpenAI, Microsoft, and other AI companies insist that using publicly available data, including news articles, to train basic algorithms falls under the concept of "fair use" in copyright law. However, publishers dispute this, arguing that companies profit from their content without paying for it.

"They pay engineers, for servers, and electricity, but they don't want to pay for content, without which they wouldn't have a product," said Frank Pine, executive editor of MediaNews Group and Tribune Publishing.

"We pay close attention to our products and development process to support news organizations," said Kayla Wood, a representative from OpenAI, adding that the company aims for a "constructive partnership" with the media. Julie Gates from Microsoft declined to comment.

Further legal battles are expected as many creative workers, including journalists, writers, and artists, consider the use of their works for AI training to be illegal. AI companies, in turn, are preparing to defend themselves by hiring teams of lawyers to counter the growing number of copyright infringement lawsuits.