New York Times Sues Microsoft and OpenAI, Alleging Copyright Infringement
The New York Times sued Microsoft and OpenAI for alleged copyright infringement, touching off a legal fight over generative-AI technologies with far-reaching implications for the future of the news publishing business.
In a complaint filed Wednesday, the Times said the technology companies exploited its content without permission to create their AI products, including OpenAI’s humanlike chatbot ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot. The tools were trained on millions of pieces of Times content, the suit said, and draw on that material to serve up answers to users’ prompts.

bought Ṁ50 of NO

"Copyright law is a sword that's going to hang over the heads of AI companies for several years unless they figure out how to negotiate a solution."

The expert quoted by that article.

NYT sues OpenAI probably requires:

Existing licensing negotiations fail, then
NYT thinks OpenAI overplayed their hand, so the merits of their case give them a reasonable chance of winning, and the benefits outweigh the costs and choose to sue.

I think the chance of "OpenAI is bad at game theory, overconfidently rejects license deal" much less than 50%

closer to 10 or 20%?

@AgenticLondoner there's a big space though where even if OpenAI plays the game theory well they still get sued. Could be because it's inevitably going to happen given the winds shifting around data protectionism, could be because OpenAI actually wants to get sued by someone so they can set a precedent they want that they think they could get, could be because the NYT actually overestimates their chances of winning

predicted NO

All things being equal, OpenAI probably dont want to be sued, or at least sued later rather than sooner.

It gives them time to grow the userbase, and spend their money on devs rather than lawyers. They can focus on developing the product roadmap ahead of other labs, become consistently profitable and safely woven into the fabric of public life.

I might be wrong - Maybe investors are holding off from investing in OpenAI due to this legal risk?

@AgenticLondoner They don't have to be bad at game theory to reject a deal.

It is enough for them to notice that what they did obviously falls under fair use, and no court will rule against them.

predicted NO

@DavidBolin its probably fair use, but there's some cost to litigating it to find that out.

And time spent hiring lawyers to find out is time spent not hiring developers to outinnovate Google, Inflection, et al with their conventional AI products.

Depending on timelines this varies from insignificant to existentially important for the company.

This could make litigation a highly negative EV play.

Will resolve to Yes if there is a case by either the NYT or some consortium that the NYT is part of. Does not resolve to Yes if there is a non-copyright related suit.