OpenAI Faces Existential Threat in New York Times Copyright Suit

The New York Times Co.'s lawsuit claiming ChatGPT has produced near-verbatim text of published articles threatens to upend the foundation of the booming AI industry, as the creators of the chatbot fight their most consequential copyright battle to date.

The Times’ nearly 70-page complaint filed in Manhattan federal court argued OpenAI Inc. and partner Microsoft Corp. scraped millions of the newspaper’s articles without a license. It alleged the chatbot output text virtually identical to published work after being provided the URL of the original article and a snippet of the beginning of the story text.

If the ...