A major copyright battle involving OpenAI, Microsoft and news publishers has taken a new turn after previously private comments surfaced in recently unsealed court filings.
Publishers argue that OpenAI and Microsoft used copyrighted journalism without permission to train AI systems such as ChatGPT and that those systems can substitute for traditional news consumption. OpenAI and Microsoft dispute the allegations and argue that AI training can qualify as fair use because models transform the material rather than simply reproducing it.
One Microsoft researcher was quoted describing large-scale AI scraping as an “astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions.” Microsoft says the remark represented an individual employee's view rather than Microsoft's legal position.
The bigger question affects almost every creator:
Who owns the knowledge AI learns from?
Writers, journalists, artists, programmers and online creators could all be affected by how courts eventually draw the boundary between AI training, copyright and fair use.
Creator → Content → AI Training → Who Gets Paid?
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