The New York Times Seeks Sanctions Against OpenAI
A group of news publishers, led by The New York Times, has asked a U.S. federal court to sanction OpenAI. They accuse the company of misleading the court and destroying evidence in the ongoing copyright dispute.
News publishers, spearheaded by The New York Times, have filed a motion with a U.S. federal court seeking sanctions against OpenAI. They allege the company misled the court regarding its ability to search for copyrighted news content used for AI training and that it deleted or made billions of ChatGPT conversation logs unsearchable during the ongoing copyright litigation.
The publishers' filing, submitted on July 9 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, claims OpenAI falsely told the court it could not search its training data or output logs for copyrighted material. This is despite OpenAI allegedly having already conducted such searches before the publishers filed their lawsuit.
"For over two years, OpenAI lied to The Times, the Daily News Plaintiffs, the public, and the court," stated Ian Crosby, lead attorney for The New York Times. He accused OpenAI of concealing its search capabilities while simultaneously claiming such searches were infeasible, burdensome, and an invasion of privacy.
The publishers further accuse OpenAI of failing to preserve evidence, alleging the company deleted or compressed billions of ChatGPT conversations, rendering them unavailable for discovery. According to the court filing, OpenAI continued deleting logs even after the court ordered it to preserve and segregate relevant data.
The publishers are requesting sanctions, including a ban on OpenAI using a 20-million-conversation ChatGPT sample in the case, a court finding of substantial and systematic reproduction of copyrighted works, and reimbursement for legal fees and litigation costs. OpenAI has denied the allegations, calling them baseless and an attempt to invade privacy. The case stems from a lawsuit filed by The New York Times in December 2023, accusing the company of using millions of articles to train AI models without permission, part of a broader trend of copyright infringement lawsuits against AI developers.