OpenAI CEO Denies Need For New York Times Data Amidst Copyright Infringement Lawsuit: 'We Do Not Want…'

Sam Altman, the CEO of ChatGPT-parent OpenAI, has refuted the need for extensive training data from publishers such as The New York Times Co. NYT after the startup got embroiled in a copyright infringement lawsuit with the media company.

What Happened: While attending the World Economic Forum's annual meeting, Altman dismissed the necessity for substantial amounts of training data from the Times. 

"There is this belief held by some people that you need all my training data and my training data is so valuable," he said, adding, “Actually, that is generally not the case. We do not want to train on the New York Times data, for example," reported Bloomberg. 

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Last year, the Times filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and its principal investor, Microsoft Corporation MSFT, alleging copyright infringement damages in the billions. This took place while OpenAI was negotiating access to news content with CNN, Fox Corp., and Time.

"What we want to do with publishers — if they want — is when one of our users says, what happened at Davos today, we'll be able to say, here's an article from Bloomberg, here's an article from the New York Times," the CEO said. "Some people want to partner with us, some people don't."

OpenAI had also previously refuted the allegations made by the Times in a blog post, attributing any instances of the AI reproducing content verbatim as a “rare bug.”

Why It Matters: Earlier this month, Tom Rubin, chief of intellectual property and content at OpenAI described the ongoing negotiations with various publishers as “very positive.” 

However, the lawsuit from The New York Times isn't the only legal action ChatGPT-maker has been facing. 

OpenAI has been facing multiple class-action lawsuits from writers, including comedian Sarah Silverman, "Game of Thrones" author George R.R. Martin, and Pulitzer-winning author Michael Chabon.

Despite these legal hurdles, OpenAI has managed to establish agreements with other publishers. It has inked a deal with the Associated Press to gain access to some of its archives and secured a three-year deal with Axel Springer SE in December.

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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of Benzinga Neuro and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.