GoKawiilA host of copyright infringement lawsuits filed by news organizations against the ChatGPT developer OpenAI are heading toward a new phase, and the Trump administration’s intervention is raising the question of just how costly it would be for AI companies to pay to license the content their models are trained on.
The cases include those filed by The New York Times and by Ziff Davis, which owns CNET. The parties filed briefings this month asking a federal court to rule on a handful of issues, namely whether OpenAI’s use of the published material constituted fair use under US copyright law.
But a statement of interest from the federal government, saying that licensing barriers would burden AI companies, drew a rebuke out of court from Ziff Davis CEO Vivek Shah. Writing in Fortune, Shah compared the total value of royalties and licensing payments in the US music industry — under $20 billion per year — with the $750 billion that OpenAI has told investors it expects to spend on computing infrastructure by 2030.
Something like $20 billion a year for licensing to news publishers would be “a rounding error” for AI firms but would have significant meaning for publishers, Shah wrote. “A sensible fee structure creates a flywheel of quality inputs and quality outputs, benefiting the AI consumer and the public good.”
A representative for OpenAI pointed to the company’s blog post on the litigation, which notes its partnerships with journalism organizations. “AI systems are a force for good in journalism and everyday Americans,” the blog post says.
Read more: We’re All Copyright Owners. Welcome to the Mess That AI Has Created
The op-ed comes as a lengthy discovery process wraps up in the copyright cases. For the purpose of discovery, a variety of separate suits against OpenAI and Microsoft were consolidated before one judge. Now the parties have taken the evidence gathered over the past few years and presented initial arguments to the court, which could rule on certain key questions before sending the individual cases back to their respective districts for potential trials.
In a joint brief (PDF), the news publishers — including Ziff Davis, The New York Times and the New York Daily News — argued that the use of their published content to train ChatGPT has undermined web traffic and diluted the market with AI-generated “pink slime” content.
“There is no doubt about ‘what would happen’ if Defendants’ conduct were to become widespread and unrestricted — because it already is happening,” the publishers argued. “One effect of ChatGPT’s release in November 2022 was to spark other companies like Google to fast-track their own GenAI products, including, most significantly, Google’s AI Overviews.”
Read more: Google’s AI Overviews ‘Misconduct’ Undermines Publishers, Lawsuit Says
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