The Times v Microsoft/OpenAI: Unauthorized Public Display of Times Works in GPT Product Outputs (12)

IV. FACTUAL ALLEGATIONS

C. Defendants’ Unauthorized Use and Copying of Times Content

3. Unauthorized Public Display of Times Works in GPT Product Outputs

102. Defendants directly engaged in the unauthorized public display of Times Works as part of generative output provided by their products built on the GPT models. Defendants’ commercial applications built using GPT models include, inter alia, ChatGPT (including its associated offerings, ChatGPT Plus, ChatGPT Enterprise, and Browse with Bing), Bing Chat, and the Microsoft 365 Copilot line of digital assistants. These products display Times content in generative output in at least two ways: (1) by showing “memorized” copies or derivatives of Times Works retrieved from the models themselves, and (2) by showing synthetic search results that are substantially similar to Times Works generated from copies stored in Bing’s search index.

103. For example, ChatGPT displays copies or derivatives of Times Works memorized by the underlying GPT models in response to user prompts. Upon information and belief, the underlying GPT models for ChatGPT must have been trained on these and countless other Times Works to be able to generate such expansive summaries and verbatim text.

104. Below, ChatGPT quotes part of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times article “Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek,” which was generated in response to a prompt complaining about being “paywalled out” of the article:[28]

105. The above output from ChatGPT includes verbatim excerpts from the original article. The copied article text is highlighted in red below:

106. Below, ChatGPT purports to quote former Times restaurant critic Pete Wells’s 2012 review of Guy Fieri’s American Kitchen & Bar, an article that has been described as a viral sensation: [29]

107. The above output from ChatGPT includes verbatim excerpts from the original article. The copied article text is highlighted in red below:

[28] For original article, see John Branch, Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek, N.Y. TIMES (Dec. 13, 2012), https://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/index.html#/?part=tunnel-creek.

[29] For original article, see Pete Wells, As Not Seen on TV, N.Y. TIMES (Nov. 13, 2012),

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/dining/reviews/restaurant-review-guys-american-kitchen-bar-in-timessquare.html.