A group of newspapers led by The New York Times has asked a federal court to punish OpenAI in their ongoing copyright fight, accusing the company of concealing evidence about how its AI systems use their journalism.
According to Reuters, whose report was written by Blake Brittain, the publishers — including the Times and the New York Daily News — asked a federal court in Manhattan on Thursday to sanction OpenAI, alleging the company lied to the court about its ability to search its own systems for proof relevant to the case.
TechCrunch reports that the news organizations say OpenAI hid tools and datasets that could identify copyrighted journalism appearing in ChatGPT's outputs, and that the publishers are escalating the lawsuit with a new motion for sanctions.
Ars Technica frames the dispute more sharply, reporting that OpenAI may be sanctioned for hiding and deleting ChatGPT logs, and that the Times has accused the company of faking an inability to search its training data while withholding billions of logs.
Outlets including the Orlando Sentinel, Sun Sentinel and New York Daily News report that the publishers are seeking "serious sanctions." PYMNTS.com summarizes the core accusation bluntly: OpenAI is accused of lying to the court.
OpenAI's response to the sanctions request is not detailed in the source items provided here.
Why it matters: This is one of the highest-stakes copyright battles over generative AI, and if a court finds that OpenAI withheld or destroyed evidence, it could tilt a case that may help define whether AI companies can train on copyrighted news without permission.