By Ben Glickman


OpenAI moved to dismiss a lawsuit from The New York Times Co., alleging the company had paid someone to hack OpenAI's products to support the suit.

The New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft, a backer of OpenAI, for alleged copyright infringement. The newspaper has claimed that OpenAI used its content to create artificial intelligence tools and that these tools divert traffic from the Times' website.

The maker of ChatGPT responded in a court filing, arguing for the dismissal of parts of the case on various grounds. OpenAI said in the filing that certain allegations were more than three years old and the company didn't have actual knowledge of the specific acts of alleged infringements.

OpenAI argued generally that ChatGPT is not a substitute for a New York Times subscription, and that people don't use its products this way.

Ian Crosby, the lead counsel for the New York Times and a partner at law firm Susman Godfrey, said that it was notable that OpenAI doesn't dispute the claim that it copied the Times's works. Crosby said the plaintiffs disagree with the assertion that it is too late to bring a claim of infringement.

In the filing, OpenAI also disputed part of the Times's complaint, alleging that the Times had "paid someone to hack OpenAI's products."

"The allegations in the Times's complaint do not meet its famously rigorous journalistic standards," OpenAI said.

OpenAI said that in order to generate responses from the AI tool that exactly matched Times content, the Times made "tens of thousands of attempts" and had to feed ChatGPT portions of articles.

Crosby said that the alleged "hacking" is just the company using OpenAI's tools to look for evidence of stealing and reproducing copyrighted material.


Write to Ben Glickman at ben.glickman@wsj.com


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

02-27-24 1613ET