Chao News client reporter Zhu Gaoxiang.
Screenshot of the lawsuit.
Recently, the New York Times sued Microsoft and ChatGPT developer OpenAI for copyright infringement, which has occupied major international headlines, and some people even think that "it may become a milestone case of AI infringement".
According to Xinhua News Agency, the New York Times sued the "Open Artificial Intelligence Research Center" (OpenAI) and Microsoft on December 27, accusing the two companies of using millions of articles to train ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots without authorization.
In the face of menacing generative AI technology, what's the point of the New York Times' "fighting back"?And what kind of impact will it have?
The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft, what happened?
On December 27, local time, the New York Times submitted a pleading, with a 220,000-page annex, to the U.S. District Court. The targets of the lawsuit are OpenAI, the technology companies that are currently hot because of ChatGPT, and Microsoft.
Chao News reporters inquired about the relevant indictment and found that in the indictment, the New York Times said that OpenAI and Microsoft used other ** in their "mass copying", but "they specifically emphasized the content of the New York Times" and tried to "hitchhike on the New York Times' huge investment in journalism to create alternative products using the content of the New York Times without permission or payment."
Screenshot of the lawsuit.
The New York Times argued that in some cases, the defendant companies copied the content published in the New York Times verbatim and provided it to users who sought answers from the AI chatbot. The use of the New York Times' work in this way is illegal, mainly because these new products create potential competitors for news publishers.
In the litigation materials, The New York Times cites the example of OpenAI's GPT-4 output of much of the New York Times' news articles, including an award-winning investigation into the New York City taxi industry, which took 18 months to complete.
While The New York Times did not seek specific damages, it held the defendants responsible for billions of dollars in damages associated with the illegal copying and use of The New York Times' unique and valuable work. At the same time, The New York Times also demanded that the defendants destroy any AI models and training data that used their copyrighted material.
The New York Times said it had objected when it discovered months ago that its work was being used to train large language models for these companies. In order to obtain fair compensation and set the terms of the agreement, the New York Times has been negotiating with OpenAI and Microsoft since April, but has been unable to reach a solution.
According to the Associated Press, an OpenAI spokesperson said in a prepared statement that the company respects the rights of content creators and is "committed" to working with them to help them benefit from technology and new revenue models. "We are in dialogue with the New York Times and moving forward constructively, so we are surprised and disappointed by the current development," the spokesperson said. "We wanted to find a mutually beneficial way to work together, as we do with many other publishers. ”
It is reported that the New York Times is the first large American organization to sue these two companies for infringing the copyright of their written works, showing the complex relationship between the media industry and AI technology.
If The New York Times and other news organizations are unable to produce and protect independent news stories, there will be a vacuum in society that computers and artificial intelligence cannot fill. In its indictment, The New York Times said, "There will be a dwindling output of journalism, and society will pay a huge price." ”
What is the impact of the media industry and AI in close proximity?
The wave of AI is sweeping, and different news ** have different approaches.
Previously, several U.S. news outlets added new ones to their platforms to prevent ChatGPT from scanning content on their platforms, including CNN, The New York Times, Reuters, and others. However, there are also some news organizations that have chosen to partner with OpenAI to allow ChatGPT to use or partially use its content, including Axel Springer Media Group, The Associated Press, and others.
Screenshot of OpenAI's official website.
Lawyer You Yunting, a senior partner of Shanghai Dabang Law Firm, told Chao News that the large-scale model training of AI technology companies has always involved many legal issues. Including, whether the large model needs to be authorized for training with copyrighted materials;If the illusion or output content of the large model infringes the rights of others due to technical defects, whether the operator should bear legal responsibility and what kind of legal responsibility should be borne.
Some people think that we humans can learn for free and absorb knowledge from the world around us, and so should machines. This is actually 'talking about toxicity aside from dose', ignoring the magnitude of materials required for large AI models. You Yunting said that the learning of the human brain is only a small number of records, while the learning of artificial intelligence can input all the information in the world in a very short time, and the magnitude is obviously different. It is precisely for this reason that You Yunting believes that the input of other people's copyrighted content into the large model should be authorized, and if the output content substantially replaces the work of the right holder and constitutes substantial similarity, it should also be authorized.
It is also because of copyright issues that OpenAI has been riddled with various lawsuits before. In June, Clarkson Law Firm, based in California, filed a class-action lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft in the Northern District Court of California.
In September of this year, George R., author of "A Song of Ice and Fire." r.Martin) and 17 other writers filed a lawsuit in federal court in New York, accusing OpenAI of "large-scale, systematic theft" by training ChatGPT with copyrighted works by well-known authors.
Xia Hailong, a lawyer at Shanghai Shenlun Law Firm, told Chao News that copyright disputes are one of the most important legal disputes in the era of generative artificial intelligence, and so far there has been no consensus in both theory and practice. In response to the New York Times lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft for infringement, under the existing copyright law system, both parties can find relatively sufficient reasons to justify their claims, and these disputes also expose the limitations of the current judicial understanding of the basic concepts in the copyright law, and this case may promote the process of amending the copyright law.
Huang Chuxin, secretary general and researcher of the China Social Science New Research Center, said in an interview with Chao News that the New York Times indictment is very significant. First, the traditional ** should always pay attention to the protection of their own content copyright, and have a sensitive awareness of copyright protection;Second, in the environment of continuous change in new technologies and new applications, how to get along with new technology companies correctly has served as a wake-up call for the industry.
At the same time, Huang Chuxin believes that AI companies, as the main body of AI technology research and development, need to bear their own main responsibilities, actively optimize technical defects in the governance of ethical crises such as digital injustice, algorithm bias, and digital infringement caused by AI technology, and constantly eliminate technological chaos in the digital age.
*Please indicate the source".