Thursday, December 28, 2023

Gray Lady Takes on Chatbot

 One of the top stories this week as reported by the Wall Street Journal and NPR is about the New York Times lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI for copyright infringement.

The issue here is how the current generation of AI products like ChatGPT have been trained on published material on the open web. Quoting the Journal:

"Tech companies building generative-AI tools have generally argued that 
content available on the open internet can be used to train their 
technologies under a legal provision called “fair use,” which allows for 
copyrighted material to be used without permission in certain 
circumstances.

"In its suit, the Times said the fair use argument shouldn’t apply 
because the AI tools can serve up, almost verbatim, large chunks of text 
from Times news articles,

"The Times suit raises the prospect of a fissure in the publishing 
world—if some major outlets follow the Times in pursuing legal action, 
while others negotiate for compensation from OpenAI, Microsoft and 
Google, which is developing its own AI efforts."

This the kind of legal case that could ultimately determine not only the future of generative AI but who benefits most — the big tech companies that have dominated the web up until now or new startups — plus what role content creators like journalists and media companies play in that process.

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