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Microsoft and its now-partner-in-crime OpenAI are once again under fire for misusing scraped data from the Internet to train their AI models. This time, the Centre for Investigative Reporting has sued the two companies for copyright violation, claiming that the two companies used the content of nonprofit news organisations without permission or offering due compensation.
The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, is based on OpenAI’s violations of the Copyright Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The announcement also included a statement from Monika Bauerlein, CEO of the Center for Investigative Reporting, adding that “This free rider behavior is not only unfair, it is a violation of copyright. The work of journalists, at CIR and everywhere, is valuable, and OpenAI and Microsoft know it.”
This isn’t the first time a news organisation has dragged OpenAI and Microsoft, its biggest shareholder, to court, either. In recent months, the two companies have been fighting lawsuits from the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, Denver Post, The Intercept, AlterNet, and Raw Story.
Independent authors are also vying for their piece of the pie. Writers like Michael Chabon, David Henry Hwang, Rachel Louise Snyder, Julian Sancton, Ayelet Waldman, and even the Author’s Guild, alongwith a group of 17 prominent authors, including George R.R. Martin and David Baldacci, have all filed copyright infringement lawsuits against OpenAI. Some of these lawsuits also rope in other AI companies like Microsoft and Meta, but most centre around OpenAI courtesy of the popularity of ChatGPT.
OpenAI seems to be dealing with legal troubles hands-on, but progress has occurred. The AI startup has negotiated with some news organisations in exchange for legal access to their content, including a deal with News Corp that allows OpenAI to pull content from major news publications, including The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, and The Daily Telegraph.
As for Redmond, the increasing number of lawsuits seems to fuel the fire. The company is still trying to work out privacy issues with Recall, a new timeline feature in Windows 11 that was supposed to be launched on debut with the new Copilot+ PCs but has since been ‘recalled’ given the serious privacy implications it carried.
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