OpenAI is facing more and more copyright infringement lawsuits after additional news publishers sued the company for illegally using their content to train its AI models.
Digital news publishers The Intercept, Raw Story and AlterNet filed a complaint against the AI company on Wednesday for using licensed content on its platforms as datasets for ChatGPT-4.
Microsoft, OpenAI's biggest investor, was also included in The Intercept's lawsuit through its Copilot chatbot, which is powered by GPT-4 and DALL-E 3, both by OpenAI.
The digital outlets accused ChatGPT of pretending to be "an all-knowing, 'intelligent' source of information" despite providing "repackages" of "copyrighted journalism."
The complainants demand OpenAI and Microsoft pay "no less than $2500 per violation."
More Lawsuit Vs AI Firms Amid Tech Boom
The rapid spread of AI technology across various industries has also prompted affected parties to start cracking down on companies profiting from their work illegally.
Among the most targeted were OpenAI and Microsoft, accused of using tens of thousands of copyrighted content through their web crawlers.
The New York Times and other prominent authors like George R.R. Martin have earlier filed lawsuits against the companies over similar reasons.
This is one of the biggest copyright lawsuits the world has seen since the establishment of the internet nearly half a century ago.
Also Read: OpenAI Claims The New York Times 'Hacked' ChatGPT for Copyright Lawsuit Evidence
AI Firms Secure Deals from News Publishers for LLM Training
At the same time, OpenAI and other AI firms have been securing licensing deals from news publishers to let them use their content for AI training.
The deals usually come with service offers from OpenAI, often giving publishers access to its advanced chatbot to integrate the tool into their digital operations.
The shift in the AI industry's approach to news publishers amid the government bringing more attention and scrutiny into its operations, specifically its development process.
News publications are among the most common sources, aside from forum sites and social media, for datasets in AI training.
Since the surge of copyright lawsuits during the AI boom last year, more publishers have demanded compensation for their content as the tech industry continues to invest in AI.
Among the news publications that have already signed with OpenAI were Business Insider's parent company Axel Springer and the Associated Press.
Related Article: Thomson Reuters Enters Discussion With AI Firms to License Media Content
