What you need to know
- A New York federal judge recently dismissed a copyright infringement lawsuit filed against OpenAI by news outlets, including Raw Story and AlterNet.
- The judge indicated that the outlets failed to show where the AI firm categorically scraped their content and used it to train ChatGPT without consent and compensation.
- The news outlets can file a new lawsuit, though the judge was skeptical whether they would “allege a cognizable injury.”
Over the past few months, OpenAI and Microsoft have been wrapped up in multiple copyright infringement lawsuits. Publishers and authors have previously cited instances where AI-powered tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Anthropic’s Claude used copyrighted information without consent, attribution, or compensation. For instance, eight news publishers filed copyright infringement lawsuits against Microsoft and OpenAI earlier this year in May.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman argues copyright law doesn’t categorically prohibit the use of copyrighted content for training AI models. Interestingly, the executive admitted developing ChatGPT-like tools without copyrighted content is virtually impossible.
As it happens, luck seems to be on the ChatGPT maker’s side following New York federal judge Colleen McMahon’s decision to dismiss a lawsuit against the AI firm by Raw Story and AlterNet (via Reuters). The news outlets indicated that OpenAI was misusing copyrighted content published on their sites to train its large language models (LLMs).
The outlets failed to establish enough harm to support their lawsuit before the court, prompting its dismissal. However, the outlets are free to file a new complaint, though the judge was skeptical if they would “allege a cognizable injury” in their new lawsuit.
For context, Raw Story and AlterNet accused OpenAI of scraping copyright management information (CMI) from their articles but didn’t categorically highlight instances of copyright infringement. This prompted the federal judge to dismiss the complaints.
According to New York federal judge Colleen McMahon:
“Let us be clear about what is really at stake here. The alleged injury for which Plaintiffs truly seek redress is not the exclusion of CMI but the use of Plaintiffs’ articles to develop ChatGPT without compensation.
Whether there is another statute or legal theory that does elevate this type of harm remains to be seen. But that question is not before the Court today.”
It’ll be interesting to see how the pending copyright infringement lawsuits against OpenAI pan out, especially after the Raw Story and AlterNet’s lawsuit was dismissed.
