The New York Times sues OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement

The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, alleging that the companies’ artificial intelligence technology illegally copied millions of Times articles to train ChatGPT and other services to provide people with instant access to information — technology that now competes with the Times.

The complaint is the latest in a string of lawsuits that seek to limit the use of alleged scraping of wide swaths of content from across the internet — without compensation — to train so-called large language artificial intelligence models. Actors, writers, journalists and other creative types who post their works on the internet fear that AI will learn from their material and provide competitive chatbots and other sources of information without proper compensation.

But the Times’ suit is the first among major news publishers to take on OpenAI and Microsoft, the most recognizable AI brands. Microsoft (MSFT) has a seat on OpenAI’s board and a multi-billion-dollar investment in the company.