Microsoft and OpenAI are facing several lawsuits for copyright infringement from various news sites, including The Intercept, Raw Story, and AlterNet. These sites allege that ChatGPT, a text generation model, has been duplicating their content, removing key aspects like the author’s name in the process.
Represented by a single legal firm, these news sites argue that if ChatGPT was trained on their copyrighted material, it would have been programmed to share the information when providing responses. Raw Story and AlterNet further asserted that Microsoft and OpenAI must have known that the revenue and popularity of the chatbot could have been impacted if users felt that its responses violated copyrights of third parties.
According to the lawsuit, these news organizations claim that OpenAI’s availability of an opt-out system for website owners points to the company’s awareness of potential copyright violations. Microsoft and OpenAI have stated that they will support customers against any copyright infringement lawsuits that may arise from the usage of their products, and they will cover all associated costs.
Last year, OpenAI and Microsoft were sued by The New York Times for copyright infringement. The lawsuit insisted that these firms should be accountable for the enormous amounts of statutory and actual damages. OpenAI’s response was to request the court to dismiss the claim; it alleged that the New York Times leveraged a ChatGPT bug that caused it to recite articles word-for-word.
In addition to these litigations, the firms are dealing with other lawsuits ensnared by non-fiction authors who accuse them of intentional massive theft of copyrighted works and comedian Sarah Silverman over parallel accusations.
