OpenAI and Google sued for copyright infringement in AI training
News organizations including the New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging they trained AI systems on millions of newspaper articles without permission or compensation. OpenAI responded by arguing that copyright restrictions should be relaxed for national security reasons related to competition with China.
What happened
News organizations including the New York Times and eight sister publications sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, alleging they vacuumed up millions of newspaper articles without permission or payment to train their AI systems.
OpenAI responded with a letter to the federal Office of Science and Technology Policy arguing that the company's ability to train AI on copyrighted content is necessary for national security to compete with China.
Reported impact
The alleged copyright infringement involved copyrighted content created by newsrooms and journalists, representing capital invested and labor performed in reporting.
Index analysis
News organizations described the alleged training practice as copyright infringement on a colossal scale, arguing that gutting copyright protections would have a chilling effect on news organizations and all creative content creators.
Governance controls
OpenAI claimed its actions were justified by national security interests in developing American-led AI built on democratic principles to compete with China.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.