Microsoft and OpenAI sued by the Center for Investigative Reporting for Copyright Infringement

Last Thursday, June 27, 2024, the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and its largest shareholder, Microsoft, in the U.S. District Court of Southern District of New York. The lawsuit accuses the tech giants of using CIR’s copyrighted material without authorization. Similar claims have been made by The New York Times and other news organisation against the two AI giants.

CIR, founded in 1976, is an independent, multi-media non-profit news organization with a significant influence across the United States. CIR alleges that the big corporations OpenAI and Microsoft have used, copied, abridged, and displayed the contents of CIR to train ChatGPT without obtaining permission or providing any compensation. The copyrighted material created by CIR was used to train the AI ChatGPT without acknowledging and respecting the Copyright.

“OpenAI and Microsoft started vacuuming up our stories to make their product more powerful, but they never asked for permission or offered compensation, unlike other organizations that license our material. This free rider behaviour is not only unfair, it is a violation of copyright. The work of journalists, at CIR and everywhere, is valuable, and OpenAI and Microsoft know it.” statement made by Monika Bauerlein, the CEO of CIR

In response to the lawsuit, an OpenAI spokesperson told CNBC, “We are working collaboratively with the news industry and partnering with global news publishers to display their content in our products like ChatGPT, including summaries, quotes, and attribution, to drive traffic back to the original article.”

The dispute brings to light essential questions about maintaining a balance between technological innovation and safeguarding intellectual property rights. News organizations, including CIR, are increasingly concerned about the unauthorized use of their work, arguing that their journalistic efforts deserve recognition and compensation.

As this legal battle progresses, it is likely to have significant implications for the relationship between AI technology and the media industry, potentially establishing new precedents for the use of copyrighted material in the digital age. The outcome of this case could reshape the dynamics of content usage and intellectual property rights in the AI landscape.

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