In a major ruling in the New York Times lawsuit against OpenAI, Magistrate Judge Ona Wang denied OpenAI’s motion to compel discovery of information relevant to New York Times’s own use of AI.
OpenAI sought from the New York Times information related to “(1) the Times’s use of nonparties’ generative artificial intelligence (“Gen AI”) tools; (2) the Times’s creation and use of its own Gen AI products; and (3) the Times’s position regarding Gen AI (e.g., positions expressed outside of litigation, knowledge about the training of third-party Gen AI tools using the Time’s works).”
But Judge Wang ruled that OpenAI failed to show any of this information was relevant to the fair use analysis.
This case is about whether Defendant trained their LLMs using Plaintiff’s copyrighted material, and whether that use constitutes copyright infringement. (ECF 170, ¶¶ 158-168). It is not a referendum on the benefits of Gen AI, on Plaintiff’s business practices, or about whether any of Plaintiff’s employees use Gen AI at work. The broad scope of document production sought here is simply not relevant to Defendant’s purported fair use defense. For example, if a copyright holder sued a video game manufacturer for copyright infringement, the copyright holder might be required to produce documents relating to their interactions with that video game manufacturer, but the video game manufacturer would not be entitled to wide-ranging discovery concerning the copyright holder’s employees’ gaming history, statements about video games generally, or even their licensing of different content to other video game manufacturers.
3 OpenAI seems to suggest that if the Times’s journalists use any form of Gen AI tools in their work, that Gen AI then “benefits” journalism, and if Gen AI tools “benefit” journalism, that “benefit” would be relevant to OpenAI’s fair use defense. But the Supreme Court specifically states that a discussion of “public benefits” must relate to the benefits from the copying. Oracle, 593 U.S. at 35.
Accordingly, because Defendant has failed to demonstrate the relevance of the informaon sought, Defendant’s moon to compel is DENIED.
Download Magistrate Judge Wang’s order below: