--- title: "The New York Times Is Apparently Considering a Lawsuit Against OpenAI" description: "The New York Times is said to be weighing a lawsuit against OpenAI over intellectual property infringement behind closed doors." date: "2023-08-17" modified: "2023-08-17" authors: - name: "Maggie Harrison Dupré" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/mharrison" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/new-york-times-lawsuit-openai" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "OpenAI" tags: - "new york times" - "OpenAI" - "publishing" - "the digest" --- # The New York Times Is Apparently Considering a Lawsuit Against OpenAI ![The New York Times is said to be weighing a lawsuit against OpenAI over intellectual property infringement behind closed doors.]() *\Image: Kena Betancur via Getty / Futurism\* ## Decisions, Decisions *The New York Times* is weighing a lawsuit against OpenAI over intellectual property infringement, [*NPR* reports](). Per *NPR*, the *NYT* and OpenAI have been in the throes of heated negotiations for weeks, in an attempt to reach a deal that would grant OpenAI a licensing deal to access to the *NYT's* vast content library. But those negotiations apparently haven't been going as planned, and the newspaper's lawyers, behind closed doors, are now exploring the possibility of legal action against the hype-rich Silicon Valley firm. From where we're sitting? It looks like the *NYT* might have some real leverage here. And if OpenAI were to lose such a high-profile case, the [AI lawsuit floodgates]() would almost certainly fly open. ## High Price According to *NPR's* sources, the *NYT* isn't just viewing OpenAI and its chatbot ChatGPT as a *tool*, per se. Its primary concern is that OpenAI, armed with troves of data scraped from the web and able to churn out text accordingly, is actually a direct competitor. And while it's one thing to have a more traditional competitor — another newspaper, online publishing — it's wholly another to find yourself directly competing with a scraped data-trained plagiarism engine that's likely remixing your reporting, among others', for profit. And as *NPR* points out, if a federal judge were to find that OpenAI had improperly vacuumed up any of the paper's material into its AI training data, the copyright penalties could be incredibly destructive for the AI firm. Federal law mandates that copyright violators can face fines to the tune of $150,000 for *each* infringement. OpenAI has pretty deep pockets, but that's a pretty steep price — and especially so if the firm finds itself liable not only in the potential case against the *NYT*, but in any number of similar suits down the line. "If you're copying millions of works, you can see how that becomes a number that becomes potentially fatal for a company," Daniel Gervais, the co-director of the intellectual property program at Vanderbilt University, told *NPR*. "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." Of course, this is all very speculative, and the *NYT* has yet to make any official moves to sue. But the [copyright lawsuits against OpenAI]() and [other AI ventures]() keep stacking up, and at some point, the other shoe could drop — though whose favor it will fall towards still remains to be seen. **More on AI and copyright:** [*Sarah Silverman Sues OpenAI for Copyright Infringement*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've reported extensively on the rise of AI as a cultural and business force shaping the media industry, and more broadly how those dynamics are changing how we all consume and share information and relate to one another. I'm also fascinated by public health policy and ethics, the role of emerging tech in politics and governance — and the powerful people and forces at those intersections — climate change, and the environment. My investigation on Sports Illustrated's use of AI-generated authors with fictional biographies won a 2024 Mirror Award for "Best Story on Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism and the Media" from Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School, I contributed to Niemen Lab's 2025 Predictions for Journalism series, and I've discussed my work for Futurism during appearances on NPR, CNN, the BBC, the CBC, and more. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I played Division I field hockey for the Minutewomen as a midfielder. Since then, I've lived in New Orleans, Louisiana and Manhattan, New York. I spend my free time running, reading, perusing archival fashion, and searching for the world’s best negroni. I also have a debonair tuxedo cat, Westley, who's named after "The Princess Bride." ### Author social links [Bluesky]()