Judge Asked to Reject Microsoft-OpenAI 'Fair Use' Claim in Copyright Lawsuit

A Manhattan judge is being asked to reject Microsoft and OpenAI's 'fair use' claim in a major copyright infringement lawsuit. News organizations, including the Orange County Register, The New York Daily News, and The New York Times, have filed a motion asking the court to determine that neither Microsoft nor OpenAI employed fair use of their reporting at any stage of the AI pipeline.

The news outlets argue that OpenAI's chatbots regurgitate news articles verbatim, and that fact-checking is often absent from these A.I.-generated reports. They claim that this has led to a tsunami of 'pink slime' news sites that plagiarize or remix content from legitimate sources.

Microsoft and OpenAI have argued that their use of human-produced journalism amounts to a 'transformative' use of the material, protected under the 'fair use' legal doctrine. However, the news organizations counter that A.I. bots don't always handle reporting responsibly, frequently churning out distorted facts in content that resembles news.

The court has yet to rule on the motions for summary judgment, and OpenAI is also facing sanctions for allegedly destroying evidence and concealing its ability to locate stolen news stories in training data.