The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft over the use of its content to train generative artificial intelligence and large-language model systems, a move that could see the company receive billions of dollars in damages. The lawsuit contains an appeal to the "vital" importance of the Times's independent journalism to democracy, arguing that it is "increasingly rare and valuable". The publisher's lawsuit is the latest in a string of similar cases, including one brought by more than a dozen authors in September targeting the company for its use of their writing. Language learning models have faced increasing scrutiny since they exploded in popularity in the past year, with news outlets in particular concerned that the tools will spread misinformation attributed to them and utilize their content with no incentive to click through to the original source. ChatGPT launched in November 2022 and amassed 100 million users in just two months.

The Times said OpenAI and Microsoft are advancing their technology through the "unlawful use of The Times's work to create artificial intelligence products that compete with it" and "threatens The Times's ability to provide that service". Through their AI chatbots, the companies "seek to free-ride on The Times's massive investment in its journalism by using it to build substitutive products without permission or payment", the lawsuit said. The Times, one of the most respected news organisations in the United States, is seeking damages as well as an order that the companies stop using its content – and destroy data already harvested. While no sum is specifically requested, the Times alleged that the infringement could have cost "billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages". With the suit, The New York Times chose a more confrontational approach to the sudden rise of AI chatbots, in contrast to other media groups, such as Germany's Axel Springer or The Associated Press, which have struck content deals with OpenAI. Microsoft, the world's second biggest company by market capitalisation, is a major investor in OpenAI and swiftly implemented the powers of AI in its own products after the release of ChatGPT last year.

The "large language models" (LLMs) behind AI tools such as ChatGPT work by ingesting huge amounts of text scraped from the internet, learning the connections between words and concepts, and then developing the ability to predict what word to say next in a sentence, allowing them to mimic human speech and writing. OpenAI, Microsoft and Google have refused to reveal what goes into their newest models, but previous LLMs have been shown to include large amounts of content from news organizations and catalogues of books.