News nonprofit sues ChatGPT maker OpenAI and Microsoft for 'exploitative' copyright infringement

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Another news organization is suing ChatGPT maker OpenAI and its business partner Microsoft for alleged copyright infringement

LOS ANGELES — The Center for Investigative Reporting said Thursday it has sued ChatGPT maker OpenAI and its closest business partner, Microsoft, marking a new front in the legal battle between news publications fighting against unauthorized use of their content on artificial intelligence platforms.

The nonprofit, which produces Mother Jones and Reveal, said that OpenAI used its content without permission and without offering compensation, violating copyrights on the organization’s journalism. The lawsuit, filed in a New York federal court, focuses on how AI-generated summaries of articles threaten publishers — a move CIR called exploitative.

“It’s immensely dangerous,” Monika Bauerlein, the nonprofit's CEO, told The Associated Press. “Our existence relies on users finding our work valuable and deciding to support it."

Bauerlein said that “when people can no longer develop that relationship with our work, when they no longer encounter Mother Jones or Reveal, then their relationship is with the AI tool.”

That, she said, could “cut the entire foundation of our existence as an independent newsroom out from under us" while also threatening the future of other news organizations.

OpenAI and Microsoft didn't immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday.

The lawsuit is the latest against OpenAI and Microsoft to land at Manhattan’s federal court, where the companies are already battling a series of other copyright lawsuits from The New York Times, other media outlets and bestselling authors such as John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and George R.R. Martin. The companies also face a separate case in San