President Donald Trump this week took OpenAI's side in its court battle against a group of media outlets, including Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting.
It was, as our CEO Monika Bauerlein wrote, an unusual move. "The brief supports OpenAI, saying it’s a vital national interest for AI companies not to have to pay for content (with a dig about how that would just be a subsidy for ‘old mainstream media companies’ anyway)."
For ChatGPT to generate responses, it is fed billions of lines of text—including thousands of articles from news websites like ours, Monika explained:
OpenAI never asked for permission to use our work, nor did they offer to pay a licensing fee. Not then, when they were building their business, and not now when they are getting ready for an initial public offering that may end up around $1 trillion. Nor, so far as we know, did OpenAI ask for permission or a license from the countless other publishers, writers, creators, or internet posters (including, perhaps, you) whose intellectual property they ingested.
A brief like the one the administration filed doesn't have much legal weight—but symbolically, it means a great deal. Monika lays out the stakes here.
—Sophie Hurwitz
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