OpenAI is facing multiple lawsuits for using content from multiple publications and books to train its large language models without explicit permission or proper compensation. A judge has just dismissed one of them. New York federal judge Colleen McMahon has dismissed the lawsuit filed by Raw Story and AlterNet, which accused the company of using their content for AI training without consent.
As VentureBeat notes, however, their complaint did not argue that OpenAI violated their copyright like the other publications’ lawsuits did. Instead, it focused on a DMCA provision that protects “copyright management information.” The publications argued that OpenAI removed author names, titles, and other metadata identifying their copyrights from the articles it used to train its LLM.
McMahon explained that the plaintiffs failed to show that they suffered a “cognizable injury” from those actions and that the damages they cited were “not the type of harm that is raised to be sued”.
The judge also said that “there is a very low likelihood that ChatGPT would output content plagiarized from any one of [their] articles”. He added that the plaintiffs are actually seeking redress for the use of their articles “without any compensation to those who developed ChatGPT”, not for the removal of their copyright management information.
Raw Story and AlterNet do not intend to back down based on what they told Reuters. Their lawyer, Matt Topic, said they are “certain [they] can address the concerns identified by the court through an amended complaint”.
Axios is expanding its local newsletter presence from 30 to 34 cities. What’s the point? OpenAI is funding it. In its continued pretense of benefiting newsrooms, OpenAI has filed suit to fund newsrooms in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Axios has partnered with OpenAI in a three-year deal to cover Kansas City, Missouri; Boulder, Colorado; and Huntsville, Alabama. What does OpenAI get in return for its funding? Oh, just the ability to use Axios content to answer users’ questions.
Like the roughly 20 newsrooms OpenAI has partnered with, Axios seems to have forgotten that the scorpion stung the frog. Instead, we have this great statement from Axios co-founder and CEO Jim VandeHei: “We launched Axios Local nearly four years ago with the bold goal of bringing local news to communities across the country. OpenAI’s investment will allow us to continue to expand and deliver essential local news to qualified audiences.”
Axios will be able to build its own AI-powered systems and products using OpenAI’s technology. However, VandeHei did issue a memo to employees stating that the aforementioned technology would not be used for reporting stories (sure, because nobody has ever been fired in favor of AI before – oh wait, wait a little more and the list goes on). However, Axios’ announcement shows that the New York Times is currently suing both OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, so maybe there is some awareness of what he is doing.