OpenAI's investor Microsoft and its co-defendant in the New York Times (NYT) lawsuit on Monday sought to dismiss parts of NYT's plea on the grounds that the news organisation did not show any “actual harm” or meaningful diversion of revenue from its website due to use of artificial intelligence (AI) models like ChatGPT.
The NYT had sued the two tech firms in December 2023, alleging that they were trying to create a substitute of the newspaper and even trying to “free-ride on the Times’s massive investment in its journalism”.
ET explains the legal battle and the course of events so far.
What is the lawsuit about?
In its petition filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, the NYT said the organisation is losing revenue because of AI tools which are diverting readers from its websites and even producing responses which are near verbatim excerpts from its articles.
Also read | ETtech Explainer: OpenAI’s response to NYT’s copyright lawsuit
The NYT also produced evidence of prompts giving such responses to the court.
Following the news organisation’s motion, several authors, computer programmers and musicians moved court against big tech companies, including Microsoft, OpenAI, Meta and GitHub, for