United States of America

NYT, Others Seek Sanctions Against OpenAI Over Copyright

Is AI training on copyrighted content theft from creators or a legally protected fair use?

Published 2 days ago

NYT, Others Seek Sanctions Against OpenAI Over Copyright

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Above: The New York Times logo displayed on a mobile phone screen with OpenAI logo in the background. Image credit: Idrees Abbas/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

The Spin

Narrative A

AI companies have built billion-dollar products by stealing copyrighted content without paying a dime to the creators who made it valuable. OpenAI even stripped bylines and copyright notices before using publishers' work, and Sam Altman admitted these models can't exist without copyrighted material. When nearly 400 local newspapers have to sue just to get compensated, the system is broken.

Hedgie on X New York Post

Narrative B

Training AI on copyrighted works is fair use — federal judges in both Bartz v. Anthropic and Kadrey v. Meta ruled exactly that, finding the process highly transformative. The real legal line is piracy and indefinite storage, not the training itself. Publishers demanding licensing fees for AI training are pushing a legal theory courts have already rejected.

Dave W Plummer on X Debevoise & Plimpton