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Title: OpenAI's Motion to Dismiss Copyright Claims Rejected by Judge

Link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/04/05/0323...

Is OpenAI's ChatGPT violating copyrights? The New York Times sued OpenAI in
December 2023. But Ars Technica summarizes OpenAI's response. The New York
Times (or NYT) "should have known that ChatGPT was being trained on its
articles... partly because of the newspaper's own reporting..." OpenAI
pointed to a single November 2020 article, where the NYT reported that OpenAI
was analyzing a trillion words on the Internet. But on Friday, U.S. district
judge Sidney Stein disagreed, denying OpenAI's motion to dismiss the NYT's
copyright claims partly based on one NYT journalist's reporting. In his
opinion, Stein confirmed that it's OpenAI's burden to prove that the NYT knew
that ChatGPT would potentially violate its copyrights two years prior to its
release in November 2022... And OpenAI's other argument - that it was "common
knowledge" that ChatGPT was trained on NYT articles in 2020 based on other
reporting - also failed for similar reasons... OpenAI may still be able to
prove through discovery that the NYT knew that ChatGPT would have infringing
outputs in 2020, Stein said. But at this early stage, dismissal is not
appropriate, the judge concluded. The same logic follows in a related case
from The Daily News, Stein ruled. Davida Brook, co-lead counsel for the NYT,
suggested in a statement to Ars that the NYT counts Friday's ruling as a win.
"We appreciate Judge Stein's careful consideration of these issues," Brook
said. "As the opinion indicates, all of our copyright claims will continue
against Microsoft and OpenAI for their widespread theft of millions of The
Times's works, and we look forward to continuing to pursue them." The New
York Times is also arguing that OpenAI contributes to ChatGPT users'
infringement of its articles, and OpenAI lost its bid to dismiss that claim,
too. The NYT argued that by training AI models on NYT works and training
ChatGPT to deliver certain outputs, without the NYT's consent, OpenAI should
be liable for users who manipulate ChatGPT to regurgitate content in order to
skirt the NYT's paywalls... At this stage, Stein said that the NYT has
"plausibly" alleged contributory infringement, showing through more than 100
pages of examples of ChatGPT outputs and media reports showing that ChatGPT
could regurgitate portions of paywalled news articles that OpenAI "possessed
constructive, if not actual, knowledge of end-user infringement." Perhaps
more troubling to OpenAI, the judge noted that "The Times even informed
defendants 'that their tools infringed its copyrighted works,' supporting the
inference that defendants possessed actual knowledge of infringement by end
users."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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