AI Training Data Lawsuit Escalates

A prominent news organization has amended its lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, accusing Microsoft of actively encouraging the use of copyrighted articles for training AI systems. The amended filing in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York specifically targets Microsoft's alleged role in facilitating this training.

This legal action highlights concerns that AI technologies, trained on vast amounts of digital data, are becoming direct competitors to traditional news sources. The news outlet argues that AI chatbots have provided users with verbatim excerpts of its content, information typically found behind a paid subscription.

The amended complaint modifies one claim against Microsoft and drops another against OpenAI. The news organization previously accused OpenAI of secondary infringement for failing to prevent the generation of copyrighted material by its users.

This lawsuit is one of over 40 copyright infringement cases filed nationwide against companies developing AI technologies. It follows a recent settlement where rival AI firm Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to authors and publishers for illegally downloading copyrighted books.