On December 27, 2023, The New York Times filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that OpenAI committed intentional copyright infringement through its generative AI tool ChatGPT. The Times claimed that ChatGPT was illegally trained on vast amounts of text from its articles, and that ChatGPT's output contained language taken directly from the articles.
To rectify this, the Times is seeking more than just money, asking a federal court to order ChatGPT to be “destroyed.”
If the request is granted, OpenAI would delete large-scale trained language models such as GPT-4 and training data, making it impossible to rebuild its technology.
This outlook is alarming for the 100 million people who use ChatGPT every week. And he's interesting to me as a law professor because two questions arise. First, could a federal court actually order the destruction of ChatGPT? And second, if it could, would it?
destruction in court
The answer to the first question is yes. Under copyright law, courts have the power to issue orders of destruction.
To understand why, consider vinyl records. The resurgence in popularity attracted counterfeiters who sold pirated records.
If a record label sues a counterfeiter for copyright infringement and wins, what happens to the counterfeiter's inventory? The master and stamper discs used to mass produce the counterfeits, and to create those discs in the first place? What happens to the machines used?
To address these issues, copyright law gives courts the power to destroy infringing goods and the equipment used to create them. From a legal perspective, there is no legal use for pirated records. There is also no legitimate reason for a counterfeiter to keep a pirated master disk. Allowing them to keep these items will only enable further illegal activity.
Therefore, in some cases, destruction is the only logical legal solution. And if a court determines that ChatGPT constitutes infringing or pirated equipment, it could order its destruction. The Times argued in its complaint that ChatGPT fits both similarities.
Copyright law has never been used to destroy AI models, but OpenAI should not take solace in this fact. The law is becoming increasingly open to the idea of targeting AI.
As an example, consider the Federal Trade Commission's recent use of algorithmic disgorgement. The FTC forced companies like WeightWatchers to delete not only illegally collected data, but also the algorithms and AI models trained on that data.
Why ChatGPT is likely to survive another day
It seems only a matter of time before copyright laws are used to order the destruction of AI models and datasets. But I don't think that will happen in this case. Instead, we believe there are three more likely outcomes.
The first and easiest thing to do is for both parties to reach a settlement. If a settlement is reached (which is likely), the lawsuit will be dismissed and no order of dissolution will be issued.
Second, the courts may side with OpenAI and agree that ChatGPT is protected by the copyright doctrine of “fair use.” If OpenAI can argue that ChatGPT is transformational and that its service is not a replacement for New York Times content, it may win.
A third possibility is that even if OpenAI loses, the law will save ChatGPT anyway. The court can only order annulment if he meets two requirements: First, destruction must not prevent lawful activity, and second, it is the “exclusive remedy” that can prevent infringement.
This means that OpenAI can save ChatGPT by proving that it has a legitimate, non-infringing use, or that ChatGPT does not need to be destroyed to prevent further copyright infringement. .
Both outcomes seem possible, but for the sake of argument, imagine that the first requirement for destruction is met. A court could conclude that any use of ChatGPT's training data article infringes the Times' copyright. This is a claim that has also been made in various other lawsuits against generative AI companies.
In this scenario, the court would issue an injunction ordering OpenAI to stop infringing the copyright. Will OpenAI violate this mandate? Probably not. A lone counterfeiter in a seedy warehouse might try to get away with it, but a $100 billion company is unlikely.
Instead, they might try to retrain the AI model without using the Times article or develop other software guardrails to prevent further problems. With these possibilities in mind, OpenAI is likely to succeed on his second requirement, and the court will not order his ChatGPT destroyed.
Given all these hurdles, I think it's highly unlikely that a court will order OpenAI to destroy ChatGPT and its training data. But developers should know that courts have the power to strike down illegal AI, and there appears to be a growing appetite to take advantage of it.
Associate Professor of Law Joan Marinotti; indiana university
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
