AI Executives' Quotes Undermine Fair-Use Defense in Copyright Case
A copyright case in Manhattan federal court has taken a significant turn as OpenAI and Microsoft executives' quotes on AI training threaten their fair-use defense. The New York Times, along with other news outlets, claims that these quotes 'eviscerate' the companies' argument that their use of copyrighted material is protected.
The lawsuit, filed in 2023, accuses OpenAI and Microsoft of using millions of articles to train ChatGPT without permission. The tech companies have argued that their AI products transform copyrighted material into new content and do not compete with or replace the news organizations' journalism.
However, previously redacted portions of the filing made public on Thursday reveal quotes from OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and others. These comments suggest that AI companies view their products as substitutes for journalism, which could undermine their fair-use defense.
Brockman is quoted as saying that large language models are 'particularly good at predicting text of news articles' and 'excellent at news.' Nadella agreed under oath that conversing with chatbots has substituted giving information on the AI platform versus needing to go to the underlying source.