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Microsoft has accused the New York Times of “doomsday futures” for predicting that ChatGPT could destroy the news industry, as it seeks to dismiss a lawsuit alleging that the creator of its artificial intelligence bot OpenAI is involved in copyright infringement.
In a filing filed with a Manhattan court, Microsoft, which has pledged $13 billion to OpenAI, likened the New York media corporation to Hollywood studios that sought to halt the introduction of video consoles in the 1980s and rein in “groundbreaking new technology.” .
The New York Times became the first major US media company to file a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft over their chatbots in December, accusing the tech companies of illegally copying millions of articles to build the software.
The news organization, which is seeking billions of dollars in damages, alleged that the two groups sought to “free ride on the Times's massive investment in its journalism by using it to build alternative products without permission or payment.”
But in a court filing Monday, Microsoft said copyright law “is no longer an obstacle to copyright.” [large language model] “than was the case with a video player (or a pianist, or a copy machine, or a personal computer, or the Internet, or a search engine),” he stressed, adding that the content used to train tools like ChatGPT “does not replace the business market.”
Lawyers for the technology group also claimed that the examples of alleged copyright infringement detailed in the original New York Times complaint were a series of “unfactual claims” that did not represent “how people in the real world use the GPT-based tools in question.”
“Nowhere does the Times claim that anyone other than its legal team would do any of this, and certainly not on a scale worthy of the doomsday outlook it pushes before this court and promotes to its readers,” they wrote.
OpenAI responded to a lawsuit filed by The New York Times in January, claiming that it had “intentionally manipulated” its chatbot, tricking it into spouting entire lines from articles published by the newspaper.
The AI startup, which has been in talks with The New York Times to license its content, admitted that it used the newspaper's articles to develop its ChatGPT chatbot, but said those articles “did not meaningfully contribute to training our existing models.” It blamed the regurgitation cited by The New York Times on “accidental saving” of ChatGPT.
In its motion to dismiss filed last month, OpenAI also claimed that “ChatGPT is in no way a substitute for subscribing to The New York Times” and that “in the ordinary course, one cannot use ChatGPT to submit Times articles on Will.”
In a statement issued in response to Microsoft's request on Monday, New York Times lawyer Ian Crosby said the technology group “compares strangely… [large language models] to video hardware Although video hardware makers have never argued that it was necessary to engage in widespread copyright infringement to build their products.
He added: “The bottom line is that The Times searched for its stolen works and found them. Microsoft is now blaming The Times for highlighting this as an excuse for its and OpenAI's mistakes.
The New York Times case is one of several lawsuits filed against the creators and investors of ChatGPT, including by best-selling authors like John Grisham and Jodi Picoult. The case brought by comedian Sarah Silverman, among others, was partially dismissed by a California judge last month.
Microsoft is OpenAI's biggest backer, having committed up to $13 billion to support the company's growth and provide the massive technical infrastructure needed to create its AI models. OpenAI's GPT technology also supports Microsoft's Bing Chat, a feature within the software giant's search engine.
In return, Microsoft is entitled to up to 49 percent of OpenAI's profits.
