OpenAI: "NYT Copyright Lawsuit Is Meaningless"

"NYT Intentionally Triggers Reflux Bug"

OpenAI has refuted the New York Times (NYT)'s claim that its generative AI, ChatGPT, infringed copyright. OpenAI emphasized that NYT manipulated ChatGPT to trigger bugs, rendering the lawsuit meaningless.

On the 8th (local time), OpenAI posted a statement on its blog, stating, "We believe NYT's lawsuit is meaningless."

[Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

NYT filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft on December 27 last year, alleging that millions of articles produced by NYT were used without permission to train generative AI, and that ChatGPT, utilizing this data, competes with NYT as a reliable information provider. NYT claimed that this caused legal and actual damages amounting to billions of dollars due to decreased advertising, licensing, and subscription revenues.

The U.S. copyright law's "fair use" provision allows limited use without permission as long as it does not unfairly harm the copyright holder's interests for non-commercial purposes. However, NYT argues that this provision should not apply because ChatGPT can provide articles verbatim.

OpenAI countered the claim that fair use does not apply, arguing that such a stance goes against AI innovation and enhancing U.S. competitiveness.

OpenAI also rebutted that NYT appears to have deliberately induced a "regurgitation" bug in ChatGPT, where the AI memorizes and repeats training content. During past negotiations for cooperation between the two companies, NYT mentioned the content regurgitation issue but refused requests to share specific cases to resolve the problem.

OpenAI stated, "We suspect NYT intentionally manipulated prompts to cause regurgitation, including long article excerpts," adding, "These excerpts originated from articles that had already been widely disseminated on third-party websites years ago." OpenAI further questioned whether the results presented by NYT occur consistently, suggesting that NYT may have selectively attempted to induce regurgitation and picked certain cases.

OpenAI concluded, "While we do not agree with NYT's claims, we see this lawsuit as an opportunity to clarify our business, goals, and methods of technology development."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.