The ongoing lawsuit by the New York Times (NYT) against OpenAI took a strange turn on July 1. OpenAI has asked the court to order the NYT to prove the originality of its articles by providing detailed source materials for each copyrighted work.
The NYT alleges that OpenAI used its articles to train artificial intelligence models without permission or compensation. OpenAI argues that its use of materials “scraped” from the internet is fair.
As first reported by TorrentFreak, lawyers for OpenAI filed a request with a U.S. court in New York. They asked the judge to order the NYT to provide discovery showing the copyrighted works are original. The “copyrighted works” in question seem to be every article the NYT has published that could have ended up online.
Specifically, OpenAI is asking that the judge order the NYT to provide full details on the authorship process of each article. OpenAI’s lawyers argue that since the NYT claims to invest significant time, expertise, and talent in its journalism, OpenAI has a right to see the process.
On July 3, the New York Times’ legal team filed a response to OpenAI’s request. They opposed the request and asked the judge to dismiss it. The NYT’s lawyers argue that OpenAI’s demand for all reporter’s notes and other materials is unprecedented and undermines copyright law. They state that the creation process of copyrighted material is not relevant to how it was used in this case.
As of July 4, no further documents have been made available to the public. It remains to be seen how the judge will respond to the motions from both parties.
