In a New York Times article titled “OpenAI Says New York Times Lawsuit Against It Is ‘Without Merit,’” the New York Times reported about OpenAI’s stunning blog post that attempted to refute the claims in the New York Times’ copyright lawsuit against OpenAI.
We summarized the details of OpenAI’s response to the NYT lawsuit. The contention was OpenAI’s assertion that “regurgitation” of articles from the NYT that were contained in Exhibit J to the Complaint were a “rare bug,” potentially caused by manipulated prompts that OpenAI claimed may have violated OpenAI’s Terms of Use.
Interestingly, the New York Times article by reporter Cade Metz is not shy about including OpenAI’s assertion or refutation:
OpenAI said its technology sometimes regurgitates articles, but that was a “rare bug” that it was working to solve. The Times’s lawsuit included examples showing ChatGPT reproducing excerpts from its articles nearly word for word.
Cade metz, NYT article on Jan. 8, 2024
“Intentionally manipulating our models to regurgitate is not an appropriate use of our technology and is against our terms of use,” OpenAI said.
Metz also reports on each side’s disagreement over whether training AI on copyrighted articles is fair use, which will be the main defense of OpenAI.
All of this public airing of legal positions is pretty unusual at the inception of a case. Corporate defendants typically don’t offer their first responses to a lawsuit in a detailed post on their website with specific attacks on the complaint filed; instead, the first response is typically a pleading (Answer or Motion to Dismiss) filed in court.
And, what makes this case even more unusual is that the New York Times, the plaintiff, runs a newspaper. So, it’s reporting about its own lawsuit, almost in real time, including the arguments or positions of its adversary in the lawsuit, OpenAI.