OpenAI Dismisses New York Times Lawsuit as ‘Baseless’; Expresses Willingness to Collaborate

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has openly criticized The New York Times, calling the lawsuit against it “without merit,” saying the publication “doesn’t tell the whole story.”

In the OpenAI and Journalism blog post, OpenAI has presented and explained why it disagrees with the claims made in The New York Times lawsuit and how it is working with news organizations to create new opportunities for mutual benefit.

To the uninitiated, The New York Times sued OpenAI and its backer Microsoft for alleged copyright infringement by using its reports to train GPT, its Large Language Model (LLM) behind ChatGPT, thus competing directly with the Times’ content. Additionally, the lawsuit also points out that this move could “threaten high-quality journalism” by not allowing news companies to hedge and lose monetization.

OpenAI says the New York Times is manipulating text prompts, but it still wants to work with it

In the post, OpenAI notes that the backlog reported by The New York Times appears to be caused by years-old articles that have already made their way onto third-party websites. “It appears that they are deliberately manipulating the prompts, which often contain long excerpts from articles, to get our models back,” OpenAI said.

It added: “Even when using such prompts, our models tend not to behave as suggested by The New York Times, which suggests that they either told the model to screw up or took their cues from many companies.”

That being said, OpenAI says this is not permitted user behavior, not typical, and not a substitute for The New York Times. The company hopes that a “constructive” partnership will emerge between it and the Times, especially given the publication’s rich history.

OpenAI says ChatGPT helps journalists with time-consuming tasks

The company states that its goal is to support a healthy news ecosystem and create mutually beneficial relationships. It says the company’s tools like ChatGPT already help reporters and editors by helping them analyze public records and translate stories. In addition, it will also display live content on ChatGPT, facilitating “new ways for news publishers to connect with readers.”

In particular, the AI giant has already partnered with organizations such as the Associated Press, Axel Springer, the American Journalism Project and NYU.