OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT is arguing that The New York Times (NYT) is not presenting the full story and that the lawsuit lacks merit following a legal dispute alleging impropriety in the use of NYT’s content filed on December 27.

In the lawsuit filed against both Microsoft and OpenAI, NYT alleges that millions of its articles were used to train AI models, including those underpinning OpenAI’s ultra-popular ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot, without its consent, and being used to compete with it.

OpenAI has continuously asserted that its AI models use publicly available internet materials which fall under fair use.

According to the U.S. Copyright Office, fair use is a legal doctrine that promotes freedom of expression by permitting the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in certain circumstances. Under the fair use doctrine of the U.S. copyright statute, it is permissible to use limited portions of a work including quotes, for purposes such as commentary, criticism, news reporting, and scholarly reports.

The U.S. Copyright Office’s website lists four factors that are considered when evaluating fair use:

1. Purpose and character of the use, including whether the use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes.
2. Nature of the copyrighted work:
3. Amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole.
4. Effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

In a public statement released on Tuesday, January 9, OpenAI said, “The principle that training AI models is permitted as fair use is supported by a wide range of academics, library associations, civil society groups, startups, leading US companies, creators, authors, and others that recently submitted comments to the US Copyright Office. Other regions and countries, including the European Union, Japan, Singapore, and Israel also have laws that permit training models on copyrighted content an advantage for AI innovation, advancement, and investment.”

OpenAI alleges that The NYT intentionally manipulated prompts to induce “regurgitation” using years-old articles that have proliferated on third-party websites. OpenAI insists that such misuse is not typical user activity.

The AI company says NYT has repeatedly refused to share any examples, despite the company’s commitment to investigate and fix any issues, and believes that the news company has intentionally manipulated prompts, often including lengthy excerpts of articles, to get the AI model to regurgitate.

“Despite their claims, this misuse is not typical or allowed user activity, and is not a substitute for The New York Times.” OpenAI added.

The crux of the matter, as OpenAI sees it, lies in The NYT not presenting the full story. OpenAI claims that discussions were ongoing for a high-value partnership focused on real-time display with attribution in ChatGPT. The sudden lawsuit, according to OpenAI, was unexpected and disappointing.

OpenAI has expressed that despite the legal right, it provides a simple opt-out process for publishers that NYT adopted in August 2023 to prevent OpenAI’s tools from accessing their sites. The company still hopes for a constructive partnership with NYT. reaffirms its commitment to collaborating with news organisations and remains dedicated to realising the transformative potential of AI in journalism.

READ: NY Times sues OpenAI, Microsoft for infringing copyrighted works