Blake Britten
(Reuters) – A group of newspapers, including the New York Daily News and the Chicago Tribune, sued Microsoft (NASDAQ:) and OpenAI in New York federal court on Tuesday, accusing them of abusing reporters’ jobs to train their generative artificial intelligence systems. intelligence. .
Eight newspapers owned by hedge fund Alden Global Capital’s MediaNews Group said in the lawsuit that the companies illegally copied millions of their articles to teach artificial intelligence products, including Microsoft’s Copilot and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The complaint follows similar ongoing lawsuits against Microsoft and OpenAI, which received billions in Microsoft funding, filed by the New York Times and news outlets The Intercept, Raw Story and AlterNet.
An OpenAI spokesperson said Tuesday that the company “takes great care in its products and design process to support news organizations.” A Microsoft spokesman declined to comment on the complaint.
The newspaper cases are among several potential lawsuits brought by copyright owners against technology companies over data used to train their generative artificial intelligence systems.
MediaNews lawyer Steven Lieberman told Reuters that OpenAI owes its stunning success to the work of others. The defendants know they have to pay for computers, chips and employee salaries, but “think they can somehow get away with taking content” without permission or payment, he said.
The lawsuit says Microsoft and OpenAI’s systems reproduce copyrighted newspaper content “verbatim” upon request. It said ChatGPT also “hallucinates” articles attributed to newspapers that harm their reputations, including a fake Denver Post article touting smoking as a cure for asthma and a bogus Chicago Tribune recommendation about a baby bouncer that was retracted after being retracted. how it was linked to infant mortality.
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The plaintiffs also include the Orlando Sentinel, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, San Jose Mercury News, Orange County Register and Twin Cities Pioneer Press. They asked the court for unspecified monetary damages and an order blocking any further violations.