Posts Tagged: "copyright infringement"

New York Times Hits Back at OpenAI’s Hacking Claims

In an opposition brief filed Monday, The New York Times Company (The Times) told a New York district court that OpenAI’s late February claim that The Times “paid someone to hack OpenAI’s products” in order to prove OpenAI infringed its copyrights amounts to little more than “grandstanding.” In late December 2023, the Times became the latest of many complainants to accuse OpenAI’s Large Language Model, ChatGPT, as well as Microsoft’s GPT-4-powered Bing Chat, of widespread copyright infringement. The Times alleged that Microsoft and OpenAI reproduce Times content verbatim and also often attribute false information to the Times. The Times’ opposition brief filed yesterday responds to OpenAI’s recent motion to dismiss, which alleged that The Times paid someone to target and exploit “a bug (which OpenAI has committed to addressing) by using deceptive prompts that blatantly violate OpenAI’s terms of use.”

Is AI’s Copyright World Flat, or Will AI Flatten the Copyright World?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is global, and copyright laws are national. Thus, some countries will have strict laws on making copies of copyrighted content to “train” an AI system while others will be more relaxed. Laws are about economics, and countries with more relaxed laws are likely to be countries with smaller creative industries and which wish to use the relaxed legal regime to attract AI investment. AI companies will use these jurisdictional differences as leverage to lobby for the relaxation of legal standards in countries with stricter laws.

Copyright Office Issues Final Rule on Several Aspects of Smaller Claim CCB Proceeding

On January 16, the U.S. Copyright Office published a final rule in the Federal Register amending agency regulations on small infringement claims filed at the Copyright Claims Board (CCB). Responding to comments from both the legal and copyright industries, the Copyright Office’s final rule addresses disputes to the form of CCB proceeding chosen by claimants, as well as the discretion of CCB officers in penalizing evidentiary violations. As drafted, the Office’s final rule on smaller claim proceedings will become effective on February 15.

New York Times Takes on OpenAI, Microsoft

On December 27, the New York Times Company became the latest complainant to accuse OpenAI’s Large Language Model, ChatGPT, as well as Microsoft’s GPT-4-powered Bing Chat, of widespread copyright infringement. The Times alleges that Microsoft and OpenAI reproduce Times content verbatim and also often attribute false information to the Times. OpenAI has been sued by numerous creators and authors for training its chatbots on content found online, including non-public or copyright-protected content. For example, the Times included examples in its complaint in which prompts to ChatGPT asking it to reproduce paywalled content resulted in verbatim excerpts from the article in question.

Jury Awards Photographer Max Damages in Copyright Suit Against Senior Living Giant

A California jury on Monday awarded what is reportedly the “largest maximum statutory damages verdict for photography infringement in U.S. history,” according to a press release issued by the plaintiff’s counsel in the case. Scott Hargis is an architectural photographer who sued Pacifica Senior Living Management LLC in September 2022 for damages and injunctive relief related to infringement of 43 of Hargis’ photos that Pacifica used to advertise and market its senior living facilities.