‘뉴스제휴 때 AI학습도 예측’ 네이버에…“그랬으면 챗GPT 왜 못 이겨?”

A legal dispute between Naver and three major broadcasting companies has been brought to light, questioning the legality of Naver using news content for AI training without proper permission. This issue arose from a contract Naver signed in 2018 to provide news content to the broadcasting companies. The broadcasting companies, KBS, MBC, and SBS, sued Naver for 7 billion won in damages, alleging that Naver used news content to train its AI models, which violated copyright laws.

During the trial at Seoul Central District Court's Civil 63 Division, the broadcasting companies argued that Naver had anticipated the use of AI models for news training when they entered the agreement in 2018. The broadcasting companies pointed out that Naver had previously released a "Clop" voice assistant service, which they believed demonstrated that Naver should have known about the potential for AI to learn from news content.

Naver's response was that the "Clop" voice assistant service was considered an "AI platform" since its inception, and that its natural language processing and AI response technology continuously improved through feedback. Naver also noted that at the time, global attention was on Google's Deep Learning and Machine Learning technologies, and that Naver considered the AI platform to be part of that paradigm.

The trial marked the first time that Naver faced a lawsuit for allegedly using copyrighted news content without permission for AI training purposes. The broadcasting companies contend that the allegations against Naver are unrealistic, given the services they had already developed at the time. They questioned whether Naver and the broadcasting companies could have reasonably anticipated the use of AI models for news training at the time the contract was signed.

The court ultimately ruled that Naver did not disclose or explain the possibility of news content being used to train "generative AI models" during the contract negotiations. However, the court left open the possibility that Naver's defense could still be presented, and denied a request to question Naver's CEO about the matter.