A U.S. judge has dismissed a case against OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, which had been accused of unlawfully stripping copyright management information (CMI) when gathering data for its AI training sets.
The suit, brought by publishers Raw Story and AltNet, alleged that OpenAI’s removal of CMI—metadata that identifies a work's copyright status—constituted a "concrete injury" to their intellectual property. The publishers argued that without this information, OpenAI’s models could potentially regurgitate protected material, leading to responses that may contain "verbatim or nearly verbatim" passages from their copyright-protected work.
OpenAI, however, seems less than fazed by the accusations. In a statement to Reuters, an OpenAI spokesperson commented, "We build our AI models using publicly available data, in a manner protected by fair use and related principles, and supported by longstanding and widely accepted legal precedents." In other words, the tech giant views this as business as usual, leaning on established legal interpretations to justify its data-gathering practices.
Earlier this year, Raw Story and AltNet alleged that OpenAI had populated its training datasets with journalistic content, taking the liberty to omit CMI that is typically protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). While this may raise some eyebrows among copyright advocates, the court’s decision effectively sides with OpenAI’s interpretation of fair use.
For now, OpenAI and its chatbots remain unscathed in this particular legal battle, but the broader debate around AI’s use of copyright-protected materials likely isn't over yet.
www.theregister.com
The suit, brought by publishers Raw Story and AltNet, alleged that OpenAI’s removal of CMI—metadata that identifies a work's copyright status—constituted a "concrete injury" to their intellectual property. The publishers argued that without this information, OpenAI’s models could potentially regurgitate protected material, leading to responses that may contain "verbatim or nearly verbatim" passages from their copyright-protected work.
OpenAI, however, seems less than fazed by the accusations. In a statement to Reuters, an OpenAI spokesperson commented, "We build our AI models using publicly available data, in a manner protected by fair use and related principles, and supported by longstanding and widely accepted legal precedents." In other words, the tech giant views this as business as usual, leaning on established legal interpretations to justify its data-gathering practices.
Earlier this year, Raw Story and AltNet alleged that OpenAI had populated its training datasets with journalistic content, taking the liberty to omit CMI that is typically protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). While this may raise some eyebrows among copyright advocates, the court’s decision effectively sides with OpenAI’s interpretation of fair use.
For now, OpenAI and its chatbots remain unscathed in this particular legal battle, but the broader debate around AI’s use of copyright-protected materials likely isn't over yet.
Judge tosses publishers' copyright suit against OpenAI
Raw Story and AltNet allowed to amend complaint
www.theregister.com