OpenAI, a prominent artificial intelligence company, has responded to a lawsuit filed by The New York Times, stating that the lawsuit is "without merit" and that it supports and creates opportunities for news organizations. The Times filed the lawsuit on December 27, accusing OpenAI and Microsoft of infringing on its copyrights by using millions of its articles to train A.I. technologies like the ChatGPT chatbot. The lawsuit claims that chatbots now compete with The Times as a source of reliable information.

In a 1,000-word blog post on Monday, OpenAI defended its practices, stating that it collaborates with news organizations and has even formed partnerships with some, including The Associated Press. The company argues that using copyrighted works to train its technologies falls under fair use, as defined by the law. OpenAI also claims that The Times's lawsuit does not provide a complete understanding of how the company and its technologies operate.

OpenAI expressed its commitment to continuing collaboration with news organizations, aiming to enhance their ability to produce quality journalism through the transformative potential of A.I. Lindsey Held, a spokeswoman for OpenAI, declined to provide further comment on the matter.

The lawsuit filed by The New York Times marks the first major American media organization to take legal action against OpenAI and Microsoft regarding copyright issues. However, other groups, including novelists and computer programmers, have also filed copyright suits against A.I. companies. These lawsuits have arisen due to the rise in "generative A.I." technologies, which generate text, images, and other media based on short prompts. To build this technology, OpenAI and other A.I. companies feed it vast amounts of digital data, some of which may be copyrighted. This has led to the realization that online information holds significant untapped value.

Companies like OpenAI have argued that they can legally use such content to train their technologies without payment, as the material is public and they are not reproducing it in its entirety.

OpenAI's blog post also sheds light on its interactions with The New York Times prior to the lawsuit. The company claims that discussions with The Times about a potential partnership seemed to be progressing constructively, with the last communication occurring on December 19. During these negotiations, The Times mentioned that it had observed OpenAI's technology “regurgitate” some of its content, meaning that the technology had generated near-verbatim excerpts from articles published in The Times. However, The Times declined to provide specific examples. OpenAI states that it was surprised and disappointed when The Times filed the lawsuit eight days later. The Times has not yet responded to OpenAI's blog post.

OpenAI acknowledges that its technology may occasionally reproduce articles but claims that it is a "rare bug" that the company is actively working to resolve. The lawsuit filed by The Times included examples demonstrating ChatGPT reproducing excerpts from its articles almost word for word. OpenAI clarifies that intentionally manipulating their models to regurgitate content is against their terms of use and is not an appropriate use of their technology.

The ongoing lawsuit between OpenAI and The New York Times highlights the contentious issue of copyright infringement in the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence. As the use of A.I. technology continues to expand, it remains to be seen how courts will interpret fair use and copyright laws in relation to training A.I. models with copyrighted material.