Center for Investigative Reporting Sues OpenAI, Microsoft

The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), a nonprofit that publishes Mother Jones and Reveal, is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement. The country’s oldest nonprofit investigative newsroom alleges the tech firms have used its copyrighted material to train AI models.

“OpenAI and Microsoft started vacuuming up our stories to make their product more powerful, but they never asked for permission or offered compensation, unlike other organizations that license our material,” Monika Bauerlein, CEO of the Center for Investigative Reporting, said in a statement. “This free rider behavior is not only unfair, it is a violation of copyright. The work of journalists, at CIR and everywhere, is valuable, and OpenAI and Microsoft know it.”

In the lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York, CIR alleged that OpenAI’s unlawful use of its content negatively affected CIR’s relationships with partners and readers and deprived it of revenue. Additionally, CIR claims that OpenAI purposefully “trained ChatGPT not to acknowledge or respect copyright.”

The nonprofit newsroom seeks “actual damages and Defendants’ profits, or statutory damages of no less than $750 per infringed work and $2,500 per DMCA violation,” meaning fines outlined in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Many other news publications have filed lawsuits against OpenAI (and Microsoft) based on similar allegations. The lawsuits come as newsrooms struggle to maintain profitability.

In December, the New York Times also filed a suit against OpenAI and Microsoft for the alleged unauthorized use of its content to train ChatGPT. The lawsuit seeks to hold the two companies accountable for “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages.” OpenAI was also sued by The Chicago Tribune and seven other newspapers in April.

Such lawsuits have not only come from news outlets. Last year, a group of renowned authors, including John Grisham, Jonathan Franzen, Jodi Picoult, George R.R. Martin, and Sarah Silverman, sued the ChatGPT maker over copyright infringement. In the spring of this year, a judge narrowed the scope of the case, finding plaintiffs could not prove current or future economic injury – though the judge allowed the core complaint to proceed.

Despite the rising number of lawsuits from news outlets and authors, some media organizations have instead chosen to sign licensing agreements with the company. Such outlets include the Financial Times, Time, and Vox Media.