On Tuesday, a group of eight US news publishers sued ChatGPT creator OpenAI and software company Microsoft for allegedly violating copyright when they used proprietary content to train their generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) models. It happens months after The New York Times sued the businesses for related allegations. ET outlines the situation and the worldwide trend.

The New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, the Orlando Sentinel, the Florida Sun Sentinel, the California Mercury News, the Denver Post, the Orange County Register in California, and the Pioneer Press in Minnesota are the newspapers that are involved in the lawsuit.

What grievances do they have?

The news publishers have filed a lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI, claiming that the two companies have been “purloining millions of the publishers’ copyrighted articles without permission and without payment” and have been using the contents to train LLMs, which are the brains of chatbots like

How did OpenAI and Microsoft react?

OpenAI stated in a statement that the firm takes great care in its products and design process to support news organisations, while Microsoft has not yet responded.

“Although we were unaware of Alden Global Capital’s worries before, we are actively involved in positive collaborations and discussions with numerous news organisations worldwide to investigate prospects, address any issues, and offer solutions.

What was stated in the NYT suit?

The New York Times sued the two businesses in December 2023, claiming that they had trained their chatbots with copyrighted content worth “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages,” and that the bots have since competed with the news organisation.

Are Indian news producers complaining about the same things?

To guarantee just pay for the use of their content to train GenAI models, Indian news publishers have proposed amendments to the Information Technology Rules.

The restrictions for non-commercial usage set forth by Hindi publishers, such as Dainik Bhaskar and Amar Ujala, prohibit AI businesses from using their digital content for model training without authorization.