News media versus OpenAI’s ChatGPT

Recently, prominent media outlets like New York Times, Reuters, CNN, and ABC blocked OpenAI due to copyright concerns and potential legal actions.

What does OpenAI do?

• The company is best known for creating ‘ChatGPT’, which is an AI conversational chatbot.
• Users can ask questions on just about anything, and ChatGPT will respond pretty accurately with answers, stories and essays.
• It can even help programmers write software code.

What started the face-off between news outlets and OpenAI?

The reason given by media against OpenAI was;

• Basis of LLMs: Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT require extensive training data to comprehend human language patterns effectively.
• Data Collection: Tech giants such as Google, Meta, and OpenAI rely on web-crawlers to gather data from online sources like social media, news articles, and e-books.
• Privacy and Usage Concerns: News outlets, including The New York Times, reacted against OpenAI's data collection via web-crawlers, blocking access to their content.
• Training Material: News organizations objected to their published content being used to train AI chat bots without consent.
• Ethical Implications: The standoff highlights debates on data scraping, copyright, and ethical considerations in AI model training.

Reason for opposing OpenAI by media:

• No monetary benefits: Search engines like Google or Bing use web crawlers to index websites and present relevant results when users search for topics.
• The only difference is that search engines represent a mutually beneficial relationship. OpenAI, on the other hand, provides no benefit, monetary or otherwise, to news companies.
• It simply collects publicly available data and uses it for the company’s own purposes.

What are concerns associated with ‘OpenAI’?

• Data Usage Rights: The use of data to train AI models raises questions about whether unauthorized usage constitutes a violation of data owner's rights.
• Financial Feasibility: The financial sustainability of AI endeavors, like OpenAI, hinges on the compensation required for data usage, with a balance to avoid becoming financially unviable.
• Value of Online Content: The argument arises that while AI models can function without specific sources, an aggregate of diverse content enhances quality.
• Quality Impact: Widespread denial of data access from media sources could potentially lower the quality of AI-generated content like ChatGPT.
• Licensing Arrangements: OpenAI's licensing deal with The Associated Press exemplifies the willingness to compensate for data usage, while legal battles with other content creators underscore complexities.
• Legal Implications: Legal battles over copyright infringement will influence journalism, intellectual property rights, and shape the future of AI development.