\n<\/p>\n
OpenAI has claimed in a motion filed Monday<\/a> that The New York Times<\/em> used \u201cdeceptive prompts\u201d to get ChatGPT to regurgitate its content. For that and other reasons, the company is asking the US District Court in southern New York to dismiss several of the claims in the outlet\u2019s copyright infringement lawsuit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n OpenAI asserts that the Times<\/em> exploited a bug that it\u2019s currently working to fix and that the outlet fed articles directly to the chatbot to get it to spit out verbatim passages. \u201cNormal people do not use OpenAI\u2019s products this way,\u201d the company says, citing an April 2023 Times <\/em>article<\/a> titled \u201c35 Ways Real People Are Using A.I. Right Now.\u201d This is all very similar to the arguments OpenAI made in its public response in January<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Times<\/em> lead counsel Ian Crosby told The Verge<\/em> in an email that calling the outlet\u2019s efforts a hack is a mischaracterization and that the outlet was \u201csimply using OpenAI\u2019s products to look for evidence that they stole and reproduced The Times\u2019s copyrighted works.\u201d He added that OpenAI doesn\u2019t deny \u201cit copied Times<\/em> works without permission within the statute of limitations.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Times <\/em>sued OpenAI and Microsoft<\/a> in December, claiming the companies trained their AI models on its content and that their chatbots could reproduce the stories verbatim. The publication alleged that this deprives it of revenue and compromises its relationship with its readers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n OpenAI is looking to partially dismiss the Times<\/em>\u2019 count of direct copyright infringement \u201cto the extent it is based on acts of reproduction that occurred more than three years before this action.\u201d It also asks the court to dismiss other allegations: that OpenAI contributed to the infringement; that it had failed to remove infringing information; and that it created unfair competition by misappropriation. The Times<\/em> lawsuit also alleges counts of trademark dilution, common law unfair competition by misappropriation, and a vicarious copyright infringement claim.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n OpenAI similarly whittled down complaints<\/a> in a lawsuit from Sarah Silverman and other authors to a single direct copyright infringement claim. As successful as its bid was and this one could be, the two aren\u2019t the only lawsuits against AI companies. Startups like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Stability AI are looking into a steadily widening maw of legal action right now, some of it from experienced<\/a> and litigious<\/a> organizations with sometimes decades of copyright battles under their belts. As The Verge<\/em>\u2019s Nilay Patel and Sarah Jeong recently discussed<\/a> on the Decoder<\/em> podcast<\/a>, the cases have the potential to upend or even obliterate the nascent industry.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n