Not only is OpenAI alleged to have stolen its work, The New York Times claimed it was now unfairly profiting off it by generating passages of its articles verbatim, allowing netizens to evade its paywall. In an attempt to wrestle back some power from tech companies, publishers are now fighting for compensation and trying to negotiate licensing agreements. But it's a difficult battle to win, especially if the law might not be on their side.
OpenAI argues that the text generated from the internet should be protected under fair use since their chatbots create and produce text that transforms and transcends the original material. Roger Lynch, CEO of magazine publisher Condé Nast, disagreed. "Fair use is to allow criticism, parody, scholarship, research, news reporting," he told the senators. "The law is clear when there is an adverse effect on the market for the copyrighted material ... Fair use is not intended to simply enrich tech companies that prefer not to pay." There are other ways that tools like ChatGPT can eat into publishers' profits beyond reproducing their stories