Recently, the US District Court for the Southern District of New York rejected Alternet and Raw Story's copyright lawsuit against OpenAI, which has aroused widespread attention in the industry on the copyright issues of artificial intelligence training data. The core controversy in this case is: Does AI companies need to obtain authorization to use copyrighted content when training models? The main reason why the court rejected the lawsuit was that the plaintiff failed to prove the specific losses he suffered, but did not directly solve the core copyright issue, and the plaintiff had stated that he would continue to protect his rights.
According to media reports, the US District Court for the Southern District of New York recently rejected the copyright lawsuit against OpenAI by news media Alternet and Raw Story, but the victory may only be temporary. The court's ruling did not touch on the most controversial core issue in the field of artificial intelligence: whether using copyrighted content to train AI models requires authorization.
The two media filed a lawsuit in February this year, accusing OpenAI of deleting copyright management information (CMI) during training data, including the author's name, terms of use and the title of the work. The lawsuit calls for at least $2,500 in damages for each infringement and asks the court to prohibit OpenAI from continuing to use its copyrighted works.
The main reason for the court to dismiss the lawsuit was that the plaintiff failed to prove the specific damage suffered by the deletion of copyright information. OpenAI said in its defense that the plaintiff could neither prove that ChatGPT had received training in its work nor to provide evidence of specific losses. The judge agreed with this view and pointed out that considering the size of the database, it is less likely that ChatGPT will output the plaintiff's article content.
You Yunting, senior partner of Shanghai Dabang Law Firm, said that providing evidence has always been a key problem in AI copyright disputes. Due to the "black box" nature of the big model, it is difficult to prove whether the specific work is used for training. However, under the existing legal framework, there is a lack of relevant systems to help vulnerable parties collect evidence.
Currently, OpenAI also faces at least six related lawsuits, including lawsuits from media such as the New York Times and the Daily News, as well as class action lawsuits from the writers. All of these cases involve a core issue: whether AI companies need authorization to use copyrighted content to train models.
It is worth noting that countries have different attitudes toward this issue. Japan has listed AI training copyrighted works as "fair use", and courts between China and the United States have not yet given a clear answer to this. Yao Zhiwei, a professor at the School of Law of Guangdong University of Finance and Economics, pointed out that the rational use theory lacks a legislative basis in China, and there is great uncertainty in its judicial recognition.
Although the lawsuit was dismissed, the judge stated in the judgment that the plaintiff could re-prosecute the issue of OpenAI using works to train AI without paying fees. Attorneys representing Raw Story and AlterNet have said they will modify the indictment to continue to defend their rights.
The judgment in this case did not end the AI copyright dispute, but instead highlighted the challenges faced by the existing legal framework in addressing the rapid development of AI technology. In the future, legislation and judicial practice need to be further explored to balance artificial intelligence innovation and intellectual property protection. relationship between.