AI Executives' Comments Undermine Fair-Use Defense in Copyright Case

A closely watched copyright case between OpenAI, Microsoft, and several news outlets has taken a significant turn. The New York Times and other news organizations have argued that executives' quotes on AI training threaten their copyright defense.

According to court filings made public on September 17, OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman described large language models as 'particularly good at predicting text of news articles', 'excellent at news', and 'very good at any news task'. He also responded 'ah nice' when told that OpenAI employees had discovered a 'hack' to get around the New York Times' paywall.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella agreed under oath that conversing with chatbots has substituted giving users information directly on the AI platform versus needing to go to the underlying source. However, Microsoft said Nadella's comment does not undermine the company's defense in the copyright case.

The news outlets claim that these quotes 'eviscerate' OpenAI and Microsoft's fair-use defense, which argues that their AI training on millions of newspaper articles is protected as fair use because it transforms copyrighted material into new content.