Journalists worldwide are increasingly relying on artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot to produce breaking news, analysis, and other stories that shape global discourse. Despite its widespread use across the industry, several prominent American news outlets have sued OpenAI. According to a report by The Associated Press (AP), The New York Times, the New York Daily News, and other media organisations are pressing a federal judge to impose sanctions on OpenAI, escalating a major legal battle over artificial intelligence and copyright that could have far-reaching consequences for the struggling news industry.
OpenAI vs media houses
The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in late 2023, about a year after ChatGPT’s debut sparked a commercial AI boom and began changing the way people search for information online. The threat to news publications became even more apparent when Google in 2024 introduced AI-generated summaries at the top of online search results, cutting off the advertising dollars that come when people click a link to the information’s original source.
Why are media houses pushing for sanctions on OpenAI?
The newspapers allege the ChatGPT maker is hiding evidence important to what could be a landmark copyright infringement trial over how OpenAI and its business partner, Microsoft, built their AI technologies using millions of news articles. At issue is whether AI chatbots are unfairly competing as an information source, siphoning off web traffic without doing the journalistic work involved in gathering the news.
A filing Thursday in a Manhattan federal courthouse alleges OpenAI “chose obstruction” over releasing datasets and ChatGPT logs that could show how the AI system used copyrighted news content. The complainants are asking the judge to penalise the company for “discovery misconduct” that could distort evidence, saying the recent deposition of an OpenAI employee contradicts the company’s earlier claims.
New York Daily News attorney Steven Lieberman said OpenAI has been “making misrepresentations” for two years about its ability to search for copyrighted content in its AI training datasets and logs. “This motion asks the court to punish OpenAI for hiding and destroying evidence showing how ChatGPT was trained on stolen journalism,” said Lieberman, who represents the Daily News and seven of its sister papers.
OpenAI responds to the piracy issue
OpenAI has described its limitations in sharing ChatGPT logs as a measure to protect user privacy. “As the Times’ case weakens and they’ve been forced to drop claims against us, they’re persisting with their efforts to invade the privacy of people who have nothing to do with this case, including by making these blatantly false allegations,” said a statement Thursday from OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri. “We’ll continue defending our users’ privacy and the long-established principles of fair use.”
80% of journalists use AI tools
According to a survey conducted by Reuters from October to November 2024 on 200 journalists, it found that over 80 per cent of them were using it for a wide variety of tasks. Nearly 42 per cent were positive about the future use of the technology, despite over half expressing high levels of ethical concerns.
ALSO READ: India Has Already Generated Over 1 Billion Images Using ChatGPT Images 2.0, Says Sam Altman
In the case involving the biggest copyright settlement so far, OpenAI rival Anthropic agreed to pay book authors USD 1.5 billion for training its chatbot Claude on their pirated works — an amount that represents a small fraction of Anthropic’s USD 965 billion market valuation as it prepares to become publicly traded.
(With inputs from agencies)
You may also like to watch