Recently, the US Southern District Court of New York made a judgment on the copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Raw Story Media and AlterNet Media against OpenAI, and rejected the plaintiff's lawsuit. The core dispute in this case is whether OpenAI used the plaintiff’s news articles unauthorized in training its large language model ChatGPT and whether it violated relevant provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This judgment is of great reference significance for the field of artificial intelligence and the future handling of similar copyright disputes, and has also triggered extensive discussions in the industry on the balance point between AI model training and copyright protection.
Raw Story and AlterNet are two major left-wing online news outlets that claim OpenAI used their website articles to train ChatGPT and other models without authorization, and removed copyright management during use. Information (CMI). Unauthorized removal or alteration of CMI is deemed to be copyright infringement under Section 1202(b) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The plaintiff believes that OpenAI failed to retain this information in the generated content, resulting in the infringement of its works.
However, Judge Colleen McMahon believes that the plaintiffs failed to prove that Open's actions caused specific practical harm to them, a requirement that litigation was necessary in accordance with Article 3 of the U.S. Constitution. The judge noted that with the continuous evolution of large language model interfaces, the genera and traceability of content have become more complex, and generative AI is unlikely to copy the original article verbatim. Therefore, the plaintiff's claim seems even more far-fetched.
In addition, the judge mentioned that generative AI generates content through comprehensive information, not simple repetition. Plaintiffs failed to provide sufficient evidence that their specific work was directly violated, causing identifiable damage.
This judgment has attracted widespread attention in the AI field because it reveals the difficulties that laws face when dealing with the generation of AI. The courts do not agree with the application standards of DMCA Article 1202(b). Some courts require that the infringement be exactly consistent with the original work, while others allow for more flexible interpretation.
Raw Story's defeat was not only a victory for OpenAI, but may also provide a certain basis for the handling of other similar cases. With the rapid development of AI technology, how content creators ensure that their works are protected and properly compensated has become an urgent problem.
Key points:
The plaintiff failed to prove that the actual damage caused by OpenAI's actions and the court ruled to dismiss the lawsuit.
The judge emphasized that the comprehensiveness of the content of generative AI makes the possibility of verbatim copying less.
This judgment provides legal reference and inspiration for the future handling of AI and copyright disputes.
In short, this judgment provides a new perspective for the balance between the development of artificial intelligence technology and copyright protection, and also provides an important reference case for similar legal disputes in the future. How to balance technological innovation and intellectual property protection still needs to continue to explore and improve the legal framework.