Rival news organizations are banding together for a noble cause: protecting their copyrighted materials from ChatGPT.
What happened: A coalition of Canadian news companies is suing OpenAI, claiming the company illegally trained its AI models on their news stories. The group wants $20,000 per article used by OpenAI, which could put the total damages in the billions.
- The group includes Torstar, The Globe and Mail, Postmedia, Canadian Press, and CBC.
- The suit also asks OpenAI to turn over any profits made off of the news organizations’ content, and to bar the company from using their articles in the future.
Catch-up: Several outlets have sued OpenAI, the most prominent of which being the New York Times. That lawsuit didn’t include an exact dollar figure — calling broadly for “billions of dollars” in damages — but did ask for an order to destroy models and training data that used its copyrighted work.
- Other outlets that have sued OpenAI include a group owned by Alden Global Capital — including the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, and Orlando Sentinel — progressive magazine Mother Jones, and investigative outlet The Intercept.
Zoom in: How do you determine how much of OpenAI’s profits came from Canadian news content? OpenAI may have to track exactly how many of the millions of queries it gets every day returned info from Canadian news outlets or argue for an amount based on what percentage of training data is from the group.
- Both options would require outside lawyers to pore over OpenAI’s training data and models, which have been closely guarded secrets. The NYT getting a peek is why the currently ongoing discovery phase of its lawsuit is such a big deal.
- Any monetary penalty would hurt OpenAI, which is reportedly “burning through” cash in a race to develop new products.
Why it matters: Even if a court picks lesser penalties or OpenAI decides to settle, it could add to struggling news outlets’ coffers and force OpenAI and companies like it to be a bit more diligent about using copyrighted material — be it to save cash or avoid the headache of going back to court.
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