The Southern District of New York has dismissed a copyright lawsuit brought by online news outlets Raw Story Media and AlterNet Media against artificial intelligence company OpenAI. The plaintiffs alleged that OpenAI violated copyrights by using scraped news content in its training data without preserving copyright management information (CMI) as required under Section 1202(b) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
Judge Colleen McMahon granted OpenAI’s motion to dismiss the case, finding that the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate a concrete, actual injury resulting from OpenAI’s actions. The judge noted that the evolving nature of large language model interfaces and the synthesis of information by generative AI make it difficult to prove direct infringement of specific works.
The dismissal highlights the challenges courts face in applying traditional copyright law to generative AI and the uncertainties surrounding Section 1202(b) of the DMCA. While the ruling is a win for OpenAI, it also raises questions about how content creators can ensure proper credit and prevent unauthorized use of their work in AI training datasets. The case may be refiled, but significant obstacles remain for the plaintiffs to prove harm.
Sources: Reuters, VentureBeat