Artificial intelligence and copyright

The go-live of Chat GPT impacted the way we work. There are an increasing number of training courses and articles on how to use this tool. However, its use raises the question of potential copyright infringement.

The protection of creations generated by AI is often discussed, but recent events are a reminder that the use of AI also raises certain risks of copyright infringement.

At the end of December 2023, The New York Times filed a complaint against OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, and Microsoft for copyright infringement.

In a previous article, we discussed the challenges and opportunities presented by ChatGPT and highlighted its impact on intellectual property.

The statement of claim in the lawsuit brought by The New York Times (available via the following link) clearly highlights the infringement to US copyright, illustrating this with concrete examples.

The main complaints against ChatGPT are:

• The unauthorised use and copy of the newspaper’s content, in particular during ChatGPT’s “training”. In the claim, it is emphasised that to train ChatGPT, Open AI used content belonging to The New York Times without any licence or compensation having been granted to The New York Times.
• The reproduction of The New York Times articles when explicitly requested by the user.
• The occurrence of “Hallucinations” falsely attributed to The New York Times. Some of the information provided by ChatGPT mentions The New York Times as the author or the source of the information. However, the American newspaper never published these information, which constitutes disinformation and is detrimental to the newspaper.