News Outlets Take Action to Prevent OpenAI Bot from Being Misused
Media outlets are increasingly preventing OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, from utilizing a webpage-scanning tool to enhance its artificial intelligence models.
The New York Times, CNN, Australian broadcaster ABC, and news agencies Reuters and Bloomberg have taken steps to block GPTBot, a bot crawler launched on August 8.
They were followed by French news organizations including France 24, RFI, Mediapart, Radio France and TF1.
“One thing cannot stand: it is the unauthorized looting of content,” Sibyle Veil, president of Radio France, said at a news conference on Monday.
Nearly 10 percent of the world’s top 1,000 websites blocked access to GPTBot just two weeks after its launch, according to plagiarism tracker Originality.ai.
These include Amazon.com, Wikihow.com, Quora.com and Shutterstock. Originality.ai said it expects the list to grow by five percent per week.
OpenAI says on its website that “allowing GPTBot access to your site can help AI models become more specific and improve their overall capabilities and security.”
But the California startup also offers instructions on how to block the bot.
“There is no reason for them to come and learn about our content without compensation,” Laurent Frisch, head of digital and innovation strategy at Radio France, told AFP.
– Reasonable salary
AI tools like chatbot ChatGPT and image generators DALL-E 2, Stable Diffusion and Midjourney exploded in popularity last year with their ability to generate rich content from short text prompts.
However, the companies behind the tools, including OpenAI and Stability AI, are already facing lawsuits from artists, writers and others who claim their work has been plagiarized.
“It is enough that we are being robbed by these companies, which are turning profits behind our production,” added Vincent Fleury, head of digital space at France Medias Monde, the parent company of France 24 and RFI.
French media leaders also expressed concern that their content would be associated with false information.
They said discussions with OpenAI and other generative AI groups are needed.
“The media must be compensated fairly. We want to get licensing and payment agreements,” said Bertrand Gie, head of Le Figaro’s news department and chairman of the Online Services Publishers group.
– “Maintaining public trust” –
The US news agency Associated Press reached an agreement with OpenAI in July, authorizing the startup to use its archives dating back to 1985 in exchange for access to its technology and AI expertise.
OpenAI has also committed $5 million to support the expansion of the American Journalism Project, an organization that supports local media.
It also offered the nonprofit up to $5 million in credits to help organizations evaluate and adopt AI technologies.
A consortium of news agencies including AFP, the Associated Press and Gannett/USA Today published an open letter earlier in August saying AI companies must seek permission before they can use copyrighted text and images to produce content.
The organizations said that while they support the responsible deployment of generative AI technology, “a legal framework must be developed to protect content that powers AI applications and maintain public trust in the media that promotes facts and fuels our democracies.”
