NYT vs OpenAI: The Battle Over AI-Generated Texts
The New York Times (NYT) has declared war on OpenAI, a research organization that develops artificial intelligence (AI) models that can generate natural language texts based on any input. The NYT has updated its terms of service in August 2023 to ban the use of its content for AI training purposes. It has also blocked OpenAI’s web crawler, GPTBot, which was introduced earlier that month. GPTBot is an AI system that can produce texts on any topic, such as news articles, essays, reviews, and even fiction.
The NYT is not alone in its fight against AI scrapers. Other media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Guardian have also implemented similar policies to protect their content from being used by AI models without their consent. These publishers argue that they have a responsibility to protect their intellectual property and their journalists’ work product, which is why they prohibit the use of their content for training artificial intelligence tools without their express written permission.
OpenAI, on the other hand, claims that its AI models are for the public good and that it respects the rights of content creators. It also says that it has mechanisms to prevent its models from generating harmful or misleading texts.
The conflict between the NYT and OpenAI raises ethical and legal questions about the use of news articles to train AI models. Some experts say that the use of news content for AI training could have implications for journalism and society, such as misinformation, plagiarism, and bias.
The NYT is considering legal action against OpenAI for intellectual property rights violations, as OpenAI has used copyrighted works to train its AI models.
Earlier this month, the Times revised its terms of service to specifically prohibit the use of its content for training “a machine learning or artificial intelligence (AI) system.” Although this will not impact the existing large language models (LLMs), if tech companies adhere to this restriction, it will hinder the development of future models using content from the Times.
The Times’ revised terms of service now prohibit the use of any of its content, such as text, images, audio and video clips, “look and feel,” and metadata, for the development of any software, including AI. Additionally, they explicitly forbid the use of “robots, spiders, scripts, services, software, or any manual or automatic device, tool, or process” to scrape their content without prior written consent. The language used is quite extensive, and violating these terms of service may lead to civil, criminal, and/or administrative penalties, fines, or sanctions against the user and anyone aiding the user.
Last week, an NPR report revealed that the New York Times (NYT) may pursue legal action against the makers of ChatGPT. This comes after both parties were unable to come to an agreement regarding a licensing deal. The deal would have required OpenAI to pay a predetermined amount for using NYT articles to train their AI models.
The battle between the NYT and OpenAI is likely to continue as both sides have different views on the role and impact of AI-generated texts. The outcome of this dispute could have significant implications for the future of AI research and journalism.
Relevant articles:
- The New York Times blocks OpenAI’s web crawler, The Verge, Aug 21, 2023
- The New York Times is the latest to go to battle against AI scrapers, Yahoo News, Aug 16, 2023
- The New York Times prohibits using its content to train AI models, MSN Money, Aug 14, 2023
- New York Times bans OpenAI’s GPTbot from using its content to train AI, HT Tech, Aug 22, 2023
Originally published at https://trendydigests.com on August 24, 2023.
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