OpenAI—OpenAI faced landmark copyright lawsuits from NYT, Authors Guild, and news publishers over unauthorized training data use
The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December 2023 for using NYT articles to train ChatGPT without permission. The Authors Guild separately sued with 17 authors including John Grisham and George R.R. Martin. By 2025, 51 total copyright lawsuits had been filed against AI companies. In January 2025, a federal judge ordered OpenAI to produce its GPT-4 training dataset to plaintiffs. Canadian and Indian news publishers also filed suits.
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intellectual Property Ethics | -against | primary | -1.00 |
| Overall incident score = | -1.360 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (critical ×2) × confidence (0.68)
Evidence (2 signals)
New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement over ChatGPT training data
The New York Times filed suit in December 2023 alleging direct, vicarious, and contributory copyright infringement and DMCA violations over copying NYT articles to train ChatGPT. The case was consolidated with suits from Daily News and Center for Investigative Reporting.
Authors Guild and 17 authors including Grisham and Martin sued OpenAI over ChatGPT training on copyrighted books
The Authors Guild filed a class action in September 2023 with authors including John Grisham, George R.R. Martin, and Nicholas Basbanes, alleging OpenAI trained ChatGPT on their copyrighted works without permission. Additional consolidated suits from Sarah Silverman, Michael Chabon, and Ta-Nehisi Coates followed.