The New York Times is contemplating legal action against OpenAI to safeguard its intellectual property rights. The newspaper and OpenAI have been in talks about reaching a licensing deal where OpenAI would pay to use Times articles in its AI services. However, the discussions have come to a standstill to the extent that the newspaper is now considering taking legal measures instead, as reported by NPR.
One concern for The New York Times is that ChatGPT could potentially become a direct competitor to the newspaper by generating text that answers questions based on the newspaper’s original reporting and writing. Another worry is that if search engines use generative AI tools, users might receive responses from the AI tool that are built upon The Times’ reporting, thus reducing the need to visit the newspaper’s website.
It remains unclear whether using data collected from the internet without permission for training AI models is legally permissible.
