Judge Considers Rejecting Microsoft and OpenAI's 'Fair Use' Claim in Copyright Lawsuit

A Manhattan judge is considering a request from news organizations to reject Microsoft and OpenAI's claim of 'fair use' in a major copyright infringement lawsuit.

The news outlets, including The New York Times, The Orange County Register, and the New York Daily News, argue that the tech companies are pirating original reporting by using it to train their large language models (LLMs) without permission or compensation.

The organizations claim that this practice has led to a significant impact on website traffic and subscriptions that fund reporters' salaries and news gathering. They also point out that A.I. bots often churn out distorted facts in content that resembles news, but contains inaccurate information about current events.

OpenAI's ChatGPT, which has over 1 billion users, is a key example of this issue. The company has acknowledged that a large chunk of its users go to it for their news, and the news organizations argue that this trend has had a drastic impact on the market for news.