The New York Times and other publishers are asking the court to penalize OpenAI
The New York Times, The New York Daily News and 15 other media organizations said in a federal court filing Thursday that OpenAI is withholding evidence that could play a key role in high-profile lawsuits the companies have filed against the artificial intelligence startup.
In their filing, the publishers called for legal sanctions against OpenAI, accusing the company of violating court rules and acting in bad faith during the fact-finding phase of the lawsuit.
The Times sued OpenAI in late 2023, accusing the company of infringing its copyright by using its materials to train ChatGPT and other technologies. In the months that followed, other publishers sued the AI startup, making similar allegations. Many of these cases were consolidated last year.
In Thursday’s motion, known as a sanctions filing, the publishers said OpenAI refused to provide information showing how the company’s AI systems are trained and used.
“The evidence is in the OpenAI training datasets and the ChatGPT output logs,” the parties said in their proposal. “But instead of simply producing this evidence early in the case and focusing on the merits of its fair use defense, OpenAI chose obstruction.”
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OpenAI spokesman Drew Pusateri responded: “As the Times’ case weakens and they have been forced to file objections against us, they continue their efforts to violate the privacy of people who have nothing to do with this case, including these blatantly false allegations. We will continue to defend our users’ privacy and long-standing fair use policies.”
OpenAI has previously denied wrongdoing, saying it respects the rights of content creators. The company also argued in a court filing that ChatGPT is not a substitute for a Times subscription.
The imposition of sanctions is an unusual move to force a judge to settle a legal dispute, said Robin Feldman, a professor at UC Law San Francisco.
“The judge will make it fall into the mud with the other parties,” she added.
The Times was the first major US media company to sue OpenAI over copyright issues related to its written works. The Times’ lawsuit made similar allegations against Microsoft, one of OpenAI’s main partners.
Microsoft has denied the allegations.
The panel last year consolidated many of the dozens of cases brought by publishers against OpenAI, including lawsuits from The Times and from authors including comedian Sarah Silverman, John Grisham, Jonathan Franzen and George RR Martin.
Like other AI companies, OpenAI has built its technologies by providing them with vast amounts of data, some of which is copyrighted. OpenAI, Microsoft and other companies have long argued that they can legally use copyrighted material to train their AI systems without paying for it because they have repurposed the material for other uses.
The Times, The Daily News and other publishers filed their motion after ousting OpenAI employees. The deposition, which was largely redacted in public court documents, shows that OpenAI may have provided the data that prosecutors have long sought, the publishers said.
“For two years, OpenAI has been making false statements in court about its ability to search for Daily News content in its training datasets and output logs,” said Steven Lieberman, an attorney for The Daily News and several other newspapers that sued OpenAI.
“OpenAI lied to The Times, the Daily News plaintiffs, the public and the court,” said Ian B. Crosby, partner at Susman Godfrey and general counsel for The Times.
The publishers are seeking monetary penalties and other penalties, according to the filing. The filing does not seek sanctions against Microsoft.