The judge dismissed some of the claims brought on by the three plaintiffs who joined forces to challenge OpenAI and Microsoft.
A federal judge in the Southern District Court of New York has allowed New York Times’ copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft to go ahead. Although, the several of the publication’s claims have been dismissed.
The US media outlet filed the lawsuit against AI juggernaut OpenAI and its biggest backer Microsoft back in 2023 over claims that AI chatbots, including ChatGPT are trained on millions of articles it published.
“Defendants seek to free-ride on The Times’s massive investment in its journalism by using it to build substitutive products without permission or payment,” the New York Times’ alleged.
Later, the publication joined forces with The New York Daily News and the Centre for Investigative Reporting (CIR) to challenge industry giants.
The defendants, however, sought to dismiss many of their claims, including alleged copyright infringement, claims that they flouted the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act and claims of ‘abridgement’ brought on by CIR.
In its own lawsuit filed in 2024, CIR claimed that OpenAI and Microsoft “copied, used, abridged and displayed” its content without permission or compensation.
After an oral hearing held in early January this year, yesterday (26 March) judge Sidney Stein denied OpenAI and Microsoft’s motion to dismiss direct and contributory infringement and claims of trademark dilution among others.
However, in a brief respite for the defendants, the court dismissed CIR’s ‘abridgement’ claims along with claims that OpenAI removed author information from plaintiffs’ journalistic work it “copied”.
Representing the news publishers, attorney Steven Lieberman, told outlets that they appreciated the opportunity to present “facts about how OpenAI and Microsoft are profiting wildly from stealing the original content of newspapers across the country”.
While OpenAI spokesman Jason Deutrom said the company welcomed the judge’s narrowing of the case and told NPR they “look forward to making it clear” that the company builds its AI models using “publicly available data, in a manner grounded in fair use, and supportive of innovation”.
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