New York Times Alleges Microsoft, OpenAI Knew Using News Content Was Theft

Two major tech corporations, OpenAI and Microsoft, have been accused of treating their AI products as replacements for journalism, according to court documents made public on Thursday. These allegations cast doubt on the companies' use of fair-use defense in a high-profile copyright case. The New York Times and other news organizations argue that the tech giants' use of millions of newspaper articles to train their AI systems is not protected by fair use, as the AI products are essentially substitutes for the journalism they generate.

The court filings, made public on Thursday, revealed quotes from key executives, including OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. These quotes from the discovery process, which were previously redacted, are said to damage the companies' fair-use defense against infringement claims. The news organizations quoted OpenAI's head of ChatGPT, Nick Turley, as saying that publishers face an "existential threat" from their products, which are largely substitutive and will continue to become more so as they improve.

Steven Lieberman, an attorney representing the New York Daily News and seven other newspapers involved in the case, stated that the evidence now shows that OpenAI and Microsoft were aware of their actions being wrong. The lawsuit, filed in 2023, accuses the companies of using millions of articles without permission to train their AI models, including those from Ziff Davis publications, the Intercept, and the Center for Investigative Reporting.

The case rests on whether AI systems can be considered fair use of copyrighted material when they transform it into new content and do not compete with or replace the original news organizations' journalism. The Trump administration has supported the tech companies, telling Judge Sidney Stein that AI training is "extraordinarily transformative."

OpenAI and Microsoft argue that conversing with AI chatbots substitutes for accessing the original sources, and Microsoft's director of applied science, Brent Hecht, even described the use of AI systems as an "astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions."