NEW YORK — Digital news outlets The Intercept, Raw Story and AlterNet are joining the fight against unauthorized use of their journalism in artificial intelligence, filing a copyright infringement lawsuit against ChatGPT owner OpenAI on Wednesday.
The organizations say thousands of their stories have been used by OpenAI to train chatbots to answer user questions, essentially piggybacking on their journalism without permission, payment or credit.
San Francisco-based OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The already beleaguered news industry sees the practice as a financial threat. Some news outlets, including The Associated Press, have entered into licensing agreements for the use of their material. After similar negotiations failed, The New York Times filed its own lawsuit in December seeking to halt the practice or receive damages.
The three outlets suing OpenAI have not provided specific examples of stories they claim were stolen. But they said reproductions of what ChatGPT used to train its bots provided examples of material from the three news channels.
“When providing answers, ChatGPT gives the impression that it is an omniscient ‘intelligent’ source of the information provided, when in reality the answers are often based on copyrighted journalistic works that ChatGPT simply mimics,” the lawsuit says.
While the Times, as a print publication, is able to pay for a federal copyright registration for all of its bulk material, digital publications do not have that option. But lawyers for the three media outlets filing a lawsuit Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York claim their journalism is copyrighted even without paying the fee.
In addition to the Times, authors including Sarah Silverman have also sued the company for copyright infringement.
The Intercept names Microsoft as a defendant because the tech giant has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI’s artificial intelligence efforts. Raw Story and AlterNet did not sue Microsoft because they have a news partnership with the company, a spokesperson said.
The lawsuit seeks at least $2,500 in damages for each time one of their stories is used by ChatGPT.
“As newsrooms across the country are decimated by the financial need to cut spending, OpenAI is reaping the benefits of our content,” said Annie Chabel, CEO of The Intercept. “We hope this lawsuit will send a strong message to AI developers who chose to ignore our copyrights and free ride on the hard work of our journalists.”