OpenAI has responded to recent legal actions taken by The New York Times (NYT), accusing the ChatGPT developer and Microsoft of extensive copyright infringement and the misuse of intellectual property.
OpenAI has shed light on its business practices summarising in four key points, each aimed at clarifying OpenAI’s position and responsibility to ethical AI development.
The company claims to have met with dozens of news organisations and industry leaders to explore opportunities, address concerns, and provide solutions. The goal is to facilitate a healthy news ecosystem, be a valuable partner, and create mutually beneficial opportunities. OpenAI cites partnerships with the Associated Press, Axel Springer, American Journalism Project, and NYU as examples of its efforts to support the news industry.
While asserting that training AI models using publicly available internet materials is fair use, OpenAI acknowledged the importance of respecting creators. The company asserts to have led the AI industry in providing a simple opt-out process for publishers, allowing them to prevent OpenAI’s tools from accessing their sites. OpenAI points out that this opt-out feature was adopted by The New York Times in August 2023.
OpenAI also noted the occurrence of “regurgitation” as a rare failure in the learning process. The company affirmed continually making progress to drive this issue to zero. Measures are in place to limit inadvertent memorisation and prevent regurgitation in model outputs. OpenAI expects users to act responsibly, underlining that manipulating models to regurgitate is not an appropriate use of the technology and is against its terms of use.
OpenAI explained that discussions with The New York Times were progressing constructively until the unexpected lawsuit on December 27. The negotiations were centered around a high-value partnership for real-time display with attribution in ChatGPT.
OpenAI contends that The New York Times’ content didn’t significantly contribute to the training of existing models, and their lawsuit came as a surprise. The company conveyed disappointment in The New York Times’ refusal to share examples of regurgitation, despite commitments to investigate and fix any issues.
OpenAI challenges the merit of The New York Times’ lawsuit, expressing hope for a constructive partnership and reiterating its obligation to collaborate with news organisations. The response points to OpenAI’s dedication to responsible AI development and the continual improvement of systems to resist adversarial attacks.
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