Independent News Outlets Sue OpenAI and Microsoft Over Alleged Theft of Copyrighted Material
The Shoestring, an independent news organization based in western Massachusetts, has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft over alleged theft of copyrighted material used to train AI technology. This is part of a larger trend where several independent news outlets have sued AI companies for the use of their published content without permission.
The lawsuit claims that OpenAI and Microsoft used a dataset containing over 68,000 tokens of text from The Shoestring's online site to build products like ChatGPT. Managing editor Brian Zayatz said, 'The law sort of implies that there should be compensation for that.' He believes this could help redirect readers back to local news sites, which are already facing significant challenges in the current market.
In response to the allegations, a spokesperson for OpenAI stated that their models are trained on publicly available data and grounded in fair use. Microsoft referred NEPM to statements responding to The New York Times' suit, saying they have 'deep respect for the critical role News Plaintiffs have long served' and that copyright law does not give news organizations the right to block transformative technologies.