AI News Roundup – U.S. newspapers sue OpenAI and Microsoft, Financial Times of London reaches agreement, ELVIS Act, and more

To help you stay on top of the latest news, our AI practice group has compiled a roundup of the developments we are following.

• • Axios reports that a group of eight major U.S. newspapers owned by Alden Global Capital, including the Chicago Tribune and the New York Daily News, has sued OpenAI and Microsoft in the Southern District of New York for alleged copyright infringement by its ChatGPT AI model. Such a suit comes as OpenAI and Microsoft are embroiled in an ongoing suit with the New York Times, also regarding copyright infringement by ChatGPT. For more analysis of the New York Times case, visit MBHB Partners Michael Borella and Joshua Rich’s coverage at PatentDocs. The Alden lawsuit claims that ChatGPT has been “purloining millions of the Publishers’ copyrighted articles without permission and without payment.” This new suit represents the growing pressure on AI developers to address the copyright concerns of publishers, studios and other content creators whose work AI models like ChatGPT are trained on.

• • The Verge reports that the Financial Times of London has reached an agreement with OpenAI to allow its content to be used in the development of AI tools, and that summaries, quotes and links to its news articles will be implemented in ChatGPT with attribution. They follow several other news organizations in signing content licensing agreements with OpenAI, including Axel Springer (publisher of Business Insider and Politico) and the Associated Press.

• • In early April, U.S. Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, unveiled bipartisan legislation entitled the American Privacy Rights Act. In a press release, the House Committee stated that the proposed legislation “sets clear, national data privacy rights and protections for Americans, eliminates the existing patchwork of state comprehensive data privacy laws, and establishes robust enforcement mechanisms to hold violators accountable, including a private right of action for individuals.” If passed, the bill would undoubtedly affect the development of AI models that rely upon large amounts of data for training. During a hearing on the legislation, a representative of the Center for Democracy and Technology testified that a “baseline set of privacy protections for all would in turn provide both a context in which to also include further protections for kids and a necessary foundation for addressing artificial intelligence (AI).”

• • NPR reports that Tennessee recently passed the Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security Act, or ELVIS Act, which updates the state’s existing laws protecting artists’ names, images and likenesses to include protection against the use of AI to mimic an artist’s voice without permission.