Northwestern law expert on new developments in NYT v. OpenAI case

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Northwestern law expert on new developments in NYT v. OpenAI case

CHICAGO - Newly unsealed court documents were made available today in the NYT v. Open AI case. The documents showed that Microsoft and OpenAI employees were alarmed over the use of millions of news articles to train its artificial intelligence systems. They were also concerned that ChatGPT could lead people away from reading actual news articles.

The New York Times first sued OpenAI and Microsoft in late 2023, arguing that the tech giants violated copyright law by scraping the legacy outlet's stories off the internet to train its AI systems without permission or compensation.

Peter DiCola, professor of law and copyright law expert at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, is available to media.

Quote from DiCola:

"The copyright infringement lawsuit brought by the New York Times (now joined by other newspapers) against OpenAI and Microsoft, based on allegations of unlawful training and output of OpenAI's model, began almost three years ago. This week's news brought us some embarrassing revelations that have emerged from factual discovery in the case. But what might look to the public like blunt admissions of OpenAI's liability may not matter to the ultimate outcome of the case, as past copyright disputes have demonstrated. None of this sheds much light on how the court would rule - nor does it tell us whether or how settlement negotiations between the parties are proceeding behind the scenes."

If you'd like to set up an interview with Professor DiCola, please reach out to Shanice Harris at [email protected].