Investing.com - The New York Times has launched a legal battle against OpenAI and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), alleging unauthorized usage of millions of its articles to train conversational AI systems.
The Times, marking itself as the first significant US media outlet to take legal action against OpenAI, the developer of the widely-used AI platform ChatGPT, and Microsoft, an investor in OpenAI and the creator of the AI platform Copilot, has raised concerns over copyright issues related to its content.
The lawsuit, filed in a Manhattan federal court, accuses OpenAI and Microsoft of attempting to capitalize on The Times's substantial investment in its journalism by using it to provide alternate methods of delivering information to readers.
Both OpenAI and Microsoft maintain that their usage of copyrighted works to train AI products falls under "fair use," a legal principle in the US that governs the unlicensed use of copyrighted material.
While the Times has not specified a particular sum for damages, the esteemed 172-year-old newspaper estimates the potential damages to be in the "billions of dollars."