there's a new legal fight that is playing out, which could have far-reaching implications for the future of news. The New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement. The lawsuit is really the first of its kind by a major media company, but it has implications for everyone because it sets the stage for what could be some groundbreaking legal fights between big tech and news organizations over their artificial intelligence products. Here tonight, joining me on this lawsuit is Axios' senior media reporter and - media analyst, Sarah Fisher. Sarah, the New York Times says that this lawsuit is coming after there were months of these behind-the-scenes negotiations. What drove them to file this lawsuit? Why now? Well, I think that the OpenAI and Microsoft folks that they could sort of pay the New York Times off, you know, strike a deal for a few years where they're paying them several million dollars. And I think what the New York Times is trying to do with this complaint is say that is just not good enough. We think, and they note this in the complaint, that there are billions of dollars worth of damages, not just a few million, that they could reap from their IP, their created intellectual property, being leveraged to train the algorithms that are used by OpenAI and Microsoft. And what's the argument from tech companies? I mean, do they essentially believe that this content that they're using to build these artificial intelligence products is essentially fair game to do so? That's exactly right. So we have a current copyright law, Caitlin, but it only protects works that are created by humans. And so the advent of artificial intelligence has forced us to reckon with how do we adapt copyright law for the modern era? Now, they argue it's within something called fair use to be able to leverage works that are made public. And one of the things that the New York Times notes in its complaint is that they're not just scraping its free content, but they're also scraping content behind its paywall, which I think will help the New York Times. But ultimately, this is a type of battle that's going to play out in courts. Don't expect Congress to pass laws. It's these types of lawsuits that will determine whether or not news companies are paid long term for their content being used. And by the way, that has a huge implication for the future of the industry, which is already struggling amid a weak ad market. I think that's an important thing here, because when I was initially reading about this lawsuit this morning, I mean, obviously this matters to people like you and me. We work in the news business. It's a question for people. But there's not a ton of precedent here, maybe no precedent here. And so what are the implications that this could have, not only for news, but also for the future of artificial intelligence and what these products are going to look like? Because they're happening, whether people like it or not or embrace it or not. But what does a lawsuit like this mean potentially for the future of that? A few things, one, they need this content and not just news content, Caitlin, they need content from writers, from artists, from book publishers to be able to inform and train their algorithms. And so if they put these types of companies out of business because we're not compensating them, then what are they going to train their algorithms on? So that's problem number one. Problem number two is that if this court decides that they do have to pay out billions of dollars worth of damages, I don't know that the business models that OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google are using to create their artificial intelligence models are going to be viable. And so this huge growth that you've seen over the past few months might come to a screeching halt if some of these court cases determine that they have to pay out billions to get the content to train their algorithms. So what are you hearing from your sources? I mean, it's pretty clear what people in the news world, how they view this, but what do people like Sam Altman who runs OpenAI? What do these other tech officials or tech people say about this? oncerns about a lawsuit like this and whether or not there's going to be more lawsuits like this? Well, I can tell you they're blindsided because they have been talking to the New York Times for a long time. And this is, if you talk to any legal expert, Kaitlin, an unprecedented complaint that is going to be a landmark case. So I think they were caught off guard, but I think their concern is whether or not they can continue, especially if you're open AI, to put forth this image of being nonprofit, being good for society. When you have complaints like the New York Times alleging, no, this is actually a for-profit entity that's to take advantage of our content for their own benefit and use, that's an existential crisis for them.
