--- title: "OpenAI Pleads That It Can’t Make Money Without Using Copyrighted Materials for Free" description: "OpenAI is begging Parliament to allow it to use copyrighted works because it's \"impossible\" for the company to make money without them." date: "2024-01-08" modified: "2024-01-08" authors: - name: "Noor Al-Sibai" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/openai-copyrighted-material-parliament" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "OpenAI" tags: - "OpenAI" - "parliament" - "the digest" - "writers" --- # OpenAI Pleads That It Can’t Make Money Without Using Copyrighted Materials for Free ![OpenAI is begging Parliament to allow it to use copyrighted works because it's "impossible" for the company to make money without them.]() *NEW YORK, NEW YORK - DECEMBER 12: Sam Altman speaks onstage during A Year In TIME at The Plaza Hotel on December 12, 2023 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images for TIME) \Image: Mike Coppola/Getty Images for TIME\* ## Please Sir OpenAI is begging the British Parliament to allow it to use copyrighted works because it's supposedly "impossible" for the company to train its artificial intelligence models — and continue growing its [multi-billion-dollar business]() — without them. As [*The Telegraph* reports](), the AI firm said in a filing submitted to a House of Lords subcommittee that using only content from the public domain would be insufficient to train the kind of large language models (LLMs) it's building, suggesting that the company must therefore be allowed to use copyrighted material. "Because copyright today covers virtually every sort of human expression — including blog posts, photographs, forum posts, scraps of software code, and government documents — it would be impossible to train today's leading AI models without using copyrighted materials," the company wrote in the evidence filing. "Limiting training data to public domain books and drawings created more than a century ago might yield an interesting experiment, but would not provide AI systems that meet the needs of today's citizens." OpenAI went on to insist in the document, submitted before the House of Lords' communications and digital committee, that it complies with copyright laws and that the company believes "legally copyright law does not forbid training." ## Rank and File There's a growing chorus of interested parties who strongly disagree with OpenAI's assertion that it's chill and legal to use copyrighted work to train AI. Just a few weeks ago, the [*New York Times* sued OpenAI]() and Microsoft, its biggest investor, for profiting from allegedly "massive copyright infringement, commercial exploitation and misappropriation" of the paper's intellectual property. The paper of record is far from alone in its legal overtures against OpenAI. A few months prior, the [Authors Guild sued the firm]() on behalf of some of the biggest names in fiction — including John Grisham, Jodi Picoult, Jonathan Franzen, David Baldacci, and George R.R. Martin — over objections to those writers' work being used to train ChatGPT. Without using copyrighted work, OpenAI "would have a vastly different commercial product," Rachel Geman, one of the attorneys in the guild's class action suit, said in a [press release about the filing](). As such, the company's "decision to copy authors' works, done without offering any choices or providing any compensation, threatens the role and livelihood of writers as a whole." On OpenAI's end, the company claims that it's seeking to broker new publisher partnerships, *The Telegraph* reports. All the same, it's hard to imagine every newspaper, website, or publishing house accepting such terms wholesale, much less [independent writers]() who rely on their copyrights to [make a living](). **More on authors and AI:** [*AI Companies Desperately Hiring Authors and Poets to Fix Their Crappy Writing*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've often been drawn to unpacking the narratives that underlie technological, scientific and medical progress, with a special interest in areas of conflict and ambiguity that end up setting agendas and steering the fates of both elites and the hoi polloi. I'm a committed generalist, but I often find myself returning to work involving NASA and the private space sector, the effects of AI on media and society, and the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry, with a specific focus on the spread of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Prior to Futurism, I worked for publications ranging from Media Matters and Truthdig to Raw Story and Bustle. I'm also the author of "Myspace Scene Queens," a 2024 title in Instar Books' acclaimed "Remember the Internet" series. My work at Futurism has been cited by outlets including the New Yorker, Slate, Nieman Lab, the Verge, the MIT Technology Review, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Beast. I grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. In my free time, I'm an avid reader and music fan; you can probably find me at a local poetry reading, concert, underground rave, or DJ set. I'm the proud parent of an ineffable orange cat named Mee-Mow. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()