--- title: "OpenAI Demands to See All Notes by New York Times Reporters" description: "OpenAI wants to see the notes to assess The New York Times' copyright claims, in the newspaper's legal battle against the AI company." date: "2024-07-19" modified: "2024-07-19" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/openai-demands-reporters-notes-nyt" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "OpenAI" tags: - "generative ai" - "microsoft" - "OpenAI" - "the digest" --- # OpenAI Demands to See All Notes by New York Times Reporters ![OpenAI wants to see the notes to assess The New York Times' copyright claims, in the newspaper's legal battle against the AI company.]() *\Image: Justin Sullivan via Getty / Futurism\* ## Cough It Up OpenAI apparently wasn't satisfied with [using the entire internet]() to train ChatGPT. The Microsoft-backed startup now wants to see *all* the notes from reporters at the *New York Times* whose articles were allegedly fed to the chatbot, as part of the discovery process in [the newspaper's lawsuit against OpenAI](). OpenAI needs to see these notes, its lawyers argue, to assess the newspaper's copyright claims. This is an "unprecedented" ploy, [reports *Bloomberg*](), that more than anything seems designed to waste everyone's time — and empty the Gray Lady's coffers with exorbitant legal costs. "*New York Times* has a limited budget to spend on a case like this, because, win or lose, these issues are not core to its business," Doug Lichtman, a law professor at UCLA, told *Bloomberg*. For OpenAI, "this is a bet-the-company fight," he added. "That imbalance means that OpenAI might want to run up the bill and thereby force the Times to settle, depriving the court of its opportunity to address these important copyright questions." ## Copyright Bluff As it stands, OpenAI wants the *NYT* to dredge up the "notes, interview memos, records of materials cited" and other files for some 10 million articles — a century's worth of reporting, the newspaper claims, which would take years to go through. OpenAI's argument is this: if the *NYT* is going to [cry copyright infringement](), then the newspaper must show that its stories are copyrightable in the first place. And for that to happen, OpenAI needs to see the reporters' notes to prove that the newspaper's stories are original. The scheme also has troubling implications for legal protections for reporters, or specifically reporter's privilege, which allows them to operate with some degree of secrecy to protect confidential sources. "Courts protect press freedom by prohibiting litigants from abusively seeking the disclosure of reporting materials that are wholly irrelevant," Ian Crosby, lead counsel for the *NYT*, told *Bloomberg*. "This request is pure retaliation against a news organization for asserting its well-established intellectual property rights." ## Bad Omen At the very least, it's unlikely that the scope of the request doesn't get knocked down by a judge. It's an unprecedented request for a reason. IP attorney Jason Bloom told *Bloomberg* that news articles are considered "obviously" copyrightable, and proving they aren't would be an uphill battle. But for OpenAI, it's probably more about sending a message: that the *NYT* has poked a bear with near-endless legal resources for a dragged-out fight. "Indeed, given the wildly improper scope of this request," the *NYT* argued in the filing, as quoted by *Bloomberg*, "one has to wonder if a chilling effect is what OpenAI, who appears to have stolen from millions of content creators, is hoping for." **More on AI:** *[Whistleblowers Say OpenAI Broke Promise to Rigorously Test AI for Danger Before Releasing]()* ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()