OpenAI, Microsoft Tangle with New York Times in Legal Quarrel Over Copyright
“The New York Times sues OpenAI, Microsoft over copyright claims”
“The New York Times has launched legal action against AI company OpenAI and tech giant Microsoft, alleging that their AI product, GPT-3, violates copyright laws by using the newspaper’s articles to train its predictive models.”
Ah, the clash of good old American capitalism and the unstoppable surge of technology. Truly a tale as old as time—or at least, as old as floppy disks and dial-up modems. On the most recent episode of “When Titans Collide”: The New York Times takes a swing at OpenAI and Microsoft over copyright laws about their AI gadget called GPT-3. It seems that GPT-3 had a bit too much of an appetite and helped itself to newspaper articles in order to fine tune its predictions.
The New York Times wants to pull the reins on artificial intelligence and its ability to copy or, in this case, learn from the newspaper’s content. A classic David and Goliath scenario, except whether our robo-David or journalistic Goliath is in the right remains to be seen. And, make no mistake about it, this lawsuit brings up critical questions about copyright and how it applies or doesn’t apply to AI.
Now let’s take a moment to remind ourselves of what GPT-3 is, in case we’ve all been living under a rock: It’s a language prediction model, or in layman’s terms, it’s like that friend who constantly finishes your sentences. Except, it’s a billion times smarter—able to write poetry, draft legal documents, and even solve some mathematical problems. All this, and all it ever wanted was to devour a nice selection of New York Times’ articles for breakfast.
Does the act of feeding an AI news articles really amount to copyright infringement? The battle lines are drawn. On one side, the New York Times protective of its intellectual property, and in the other corner, OpenAI and Microsoft. They did not steal the content, they train AI to understand idioms and syntax, presenting a very different challenge for our conventional understanding of copyright laws.
Talk about a courtroom drama worth tuning into. It’s CNN meets HBO, but way nerdier. One thing’s for sure though, the outcome of this legal wrangle will undoubtedly set a precedent for AI training methodologies and could potentially change the way we approach machine learning forever. So, grab a bucket of popcorn and your best pair of reading glasses, it’s going to be a thrilling ride!