John AdoyiThe Centre for Investigative Reporting (CIR), a nonprofit news organisation based in the United States, announced on Thursday that it has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft in New York for allegedly using its news content to train artificial intelligence platforms without permission.
It said such was in violation of copyright laws.
In a statement, CIR claimed that OpenAI, the owner of the popular chatbot “ChatGPT,” and its partner, Microsoft, which owns Microsoft Co-pilot, “copied, used, abridged, and displayed CIR’s valuable content without CIR’s permission or authorisation, and without any compensation to CIR.”
The organisation argued that users of AI tools from OpenAI and Microsoft can obtain variants of its copyright-protected material, thereby undermining the market for its articles.
“OpenAI and Microsoft started vacuuming up our stories to make their product more powerful, but they never asked for permission or offered compensation, unlike other organisations that license our material,” said Monika Bauerlein, CEO of the Center for Investigative Reporting. “This free rider behavior is not only unfair, it is a violation of copyright. The work of journalists, at CIR and everywhere, is valuable, and OpenAI and Microsoft know it.”
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Bauerlein further criticized OpenAI and Microsoft for treating the work of nonprofit and independent publishers “as free raw material for their products,” which she described as “immensely dangerous.”
She warned that this practice could lead audiences to switch their loyalty to AI platforms, reducing readership and potentially undermining the foundation of CIR as an independent newsroom.
This lawsuit adds to a growing number of legal actions against OpenAI and Microsoft from publishers and creators accusing the tech companies of using their content without permission.
In April, The New York Daily News, The Chicago Tribune, The Orlando Sentinel, The Sun Sentinel of Florida, and four other media outlets in the United States filed similar lawsuits. The New York Times was the first major news platform to sue OpenAI in December last year. Prominent authors such as John Grisham, Jodi Picoult, and George R.R. Martin have also sued both platforms for using their works without consent.
On the same day CIR announced its lawsuit, Times Magazine signed a deal with OpenAI to allow it access to over 100 of its publications. Similarly, Associated Press, Financial Times, News Corp, and other news platforms have signed multi-million-dollar deals with OpenAI to permit access to their content for AI training.
