The New York Times (NYT) has disputed claims made by OpenAI regarding alleged hacking of their ChatGPT AI tool. In response to OpenAI’s accusations that NYT hacked ChatGPT in an attempt to build a lawsuit against the AI company, the news outlet has strongly denied these claims.
NYT refuted OpenAI’s argument that they engaged in deceptive tactics to prompt ChatGPT into producing excerpts of their articles. The newspaper pointed out that users have been using ChatGPT to generate entire articles to bypass paywalls, highlighting the tool’s ability to access content behind paywalls.
OpenAI claimed that such usage was not common and accused NYT of wrongfully detecting their alleged theft of copyrighted content. However, the newspaper defended its actions, stating that it was merely trying to track the extent of copyright infringement by prompting ChatGPT to reveal evidence.
According to the court filing, NYT used specific prompts to detect instances of ChatGPT memorizing Times articles, ultimately uncovering the scale of content theft by OpenAI. The newspaper argued that OpenAI’s real issue was not with their investigation methods but with the exposure of the extensive copying of NYT’s content for AI model training.
The filing also mentioned ChatGPT users bypassing paywalls through a feature that allowed the tool to retrieve and paraphrase Times articles in response to search queries, leading to OpenAI temporarily disabling the feature. Despite user complaints, OpenAI took action to prevent the unauthorized access to paywalled content.
Overall, NYT’s response to OpenAI’s claims sheds light on the ongoing debate surrounding copyright infringement in the development and use of AI technology. The lawsuit between NYT, OpenAI, and Microsoft continues as the parties navigate the complexities of intellectual property rights in the digital age.
