A federal judge in New York has dismissed a lawsuit by news outlets Raw Story and AlterNet against OpenAI. The media organizations accused the company of misusing their copyrighted material to train its AI language model, ChatGPT. Last week, U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon granted OpenAI’s request to dismiss the lawsuit entirely, citing the plaintiffs’ failure to establish a tangible injury under Article 3 of the U.S. Constitution, necessary for legal standing.
Judge McMahon stated the plaintiffs did not demonstrate any actual harm from the alleged violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). She noted that they failed to provide specific instances of ChatGPT reproducing their content without acknowledgment, labeling the likelihood of such occurrences as “remote.”
The case, initiated by Raw Story Media, the parent company of Raw Story and AlterNet, alleged OpenAI contravened Section 1202(b)(1) of the DMCA. The complaint claimed the AI company removed copyright management details from numerous articles during the ChatGPT training process. Raw Story sought damages of at least $2,500 per violation and demanded the removal of their content from OpenAI’s datasets.
The judge pointed out that the plaintiffs’ grievance seemed to revolve around their articles being used without compensation rather than the lack of proper attribution. Despite the ruling, Raw Story and AlterNet can replead their case, although the judge was skeptical about their prospects of proving concrete injury.
OpenAI asserted its use of publicly accessible data is protected under fair use rules. The dismissal may influence similar cases, as OpenAI and other AI firms face numerous lawsuits over the data utilized in training generative AI systems. These include actions from prominent publishers like The New York Times, alleging unauthorized use of articles for AI development.
