OpenAI, led by Sam Altman, Rejects New York Times’ Claims, Attributes Content Regurgitation to ‘Rare Bug.’

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In response to a lawsuit filed by The New York Times Co. (NYT), OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT, issued a public statement on Monday, addressing the accusations made by the newspaper. The lawsuit alleges that OpenAI used copyrighted articles from The New York Times to train its chatbot and other AI features. The Times provided examples where the chatbot reproduced text sections almost verbatim from its articles.

OpenAI acknowledged the existence of a “rare bug” that causes the chatbot to exhibit this type of “regurgitation” and emphasized their active efforts to eliminate it. They suggested that the Times might have intentionally manipulated prompts and selectively chosen examples from multiple attempts.

“We regard The New York Times’ lawsuit to be without merit. Still, we are hopeful for a constructive partnership with The New York Times and respect its long history, which includes reporting the first working neural network over 60 years ago and championing First Amendment freedoms,” OpenAI stated in the blog post.

OpenAI’s chatbot, like many generative AI technologies, relies on large language models that consume extensive digital text from various sources. While using online data has been a standard practice, recent discussions and debates have arisen regarding compensation for content creators whose work contributes to these technologies.

In December of the previous year, a group of 11 nonfiction authors, including Pulitzer Prize winners, joined a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft Corporation, accusing the companies of using their writings without permission for training AI programs.

Despite the copyright lawsuit from The New York Times, OpenAI has been engaging in discussions with various publishers to license their content. Tom Rubin, OpenAI’s Chief of Intellectual Property and Content has described these negotiations as positive and progressing well.