In an ongoing legal battle, The Intercept, Raw Story, and AlterNet have recently filed separate lawsuits against OpenAI and Microsoft. The lawsuits, all being litigated by the same law firm in the Southern District of New York, allege copyright infringement. The publications claim that ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI and Microsoft, has been reproducing copyright-protected works of journalism without including essential author, title, and copyright information.

According to the plaintiffs, ChatGPT's responses, at times, mirror copyright-protected content without proper attribution, potentially violating the intellectual property rights of the original authors. Raw Story and AlterNet have gone further to accuse OpenAI and Microsoft of being aware of potential copyright issues concerning ChatGPT, claiming that the companies could have predicted a decrease in the popularity and revenue generated if users believed the responses infringed on third-party copyrights.

The lawsuits also highlight that both OpenAI and Microsoft offer legal protection to paying customers using Copilot or ChatGPT Enterprise in case of copyright violation claims. After previous allegations from The New York Times in December, OpenAI had sought to dismiss the claims, arguing that the publication had exploited a bug in ChatGPT to reproduce its journalistic work.

The legal action against OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement is not an isolated incident in the AI industry. Getty Images is suing Stability AI for their use of protected images in training models, while Universal Music Group is pursuing legal action against Anthropic for alleged distribution and recreation of lyrics without proper attribution.