New York Times sues OpenAI, Microsoft for copyright infringement

The Times on Wednesday filed a complaint in New York, claiming the companies unlawfully used the newspaper's work to create artificial intelligence products now competing with it.

"Through Microsoft's Bing Chat (recently rebranded as 'Copilot') and OpenAI's ChatGPT, the defendants seek to free-ride on The Times's massive investment in its journalism by using it to build substitutive products without permission or payment," the complaint reads.

"This action seeks to hold (the defendants) responsible for the billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages that they owe for the unlawful copying and use of The Times's uniquely valuable works," the document says.

Tech news website The Verge cited OpenAI spokesperson Lindsey Held as saying in an emailed statement that "ongoing conversations with The New York Times have been productive and moving forward constructively, so we are surprised and disappointed with this development".

"We're hopeful that we will find a mutually beneficial way to work together, as we are doing with many other publishers," Held continued, according to The Verge.

Californian start-up OpenAI captured the world's attention with its text robot ChatGPT - developed with support from Microsoft - which can answers prompts with essays, poetry, computer code and other content. Its release in 2022 threw a spotlight on advances in AI and ignited discussions about the possible consequences.