After The New York Times sued OpenAI in December 2023—alleging that ChatGPT outputs violate copyrights by regurgitating news articles—the ChatGPT maker tried and failed to argue that the claims were time-barred.
According to OpenAI, the NYT should have known that ChatGPT was being trained on its articles and raised its lawsuit in 2020, partly because of the newspaper’s own reporting. To support this, OpenAI pointed to a single November 2020 article, where the NYT reported that OpenAI was analyzing a trillion words on the Internet. But on Friday, US district judge Sidney Stein disagreed, denying OpenAI’s motion to dismiss the NYT’s copyright claims partly based on one NYT journalist’s reporting.
In his opinion, Stein confirmed that it’s OpenAI’s burden to prove that the NYT knew that ChatGPT would potentially violate its copyrights two years prior to its release in November 2022. And so far, OpenAI has not met that burden.
“The fact that one of The Times’s reporters discussed OpenAI’s” AI training fails to make it clear that the newspaper knew that ChatGPT outputs years later could possibly regurgitate the NYT’s reporting, Stein explained.
I can’t imagine being a judge assigned a case like this knowing that the verdict could have huge implications once the appeals process is exhausted.
To support this, OpenAI pointed to a single November 2020 article, where the NYT reported that OpenAI was analyzing a trillion words on the Internet.
So OpenAI’s argument was the NYT knew OpenAI existed so it shouldn’t be allowed to keep its copyright… what?
Basically, yeah. If the rest of their arguments are this weak, OpenAI is fucked, and deservedly so.
I read that section half a dozen times and I still don’t understand it.
It’s like they really don’t have lawyers on the team that know what they’re doing.
Yeah, me too. Like I get the words but not the logic.
Maybe their lawyers used ChatGPT.
they’re trying to argue that it’s like if you’re building a deck and mess up your permits, and the government knows and then waits until you’ve spent all the time and money finishing before telling you to rip it all down
If you got a permit from the government to start building a deck, you started, then they found the mistake in the permit, that’s on the government and they should accept their fault.
In this case, the NYT never gave permission.
In your example, there was no permit applied for, a cop saw you building the deck, and when the government said you need to stop and apply for a permit, you say the cop seeing you building the deck is a permit since they didn’t stop you.
okay yeah - not a perfect analogy… the point is that their argument is more nuanced… it’s still a strawman, but useful to understand their argument to predict their next moves
This is almost like a real-world Chewbacca defense?
