ChatGPT developer OpenAI's approach to building artificial intelligence came under fire this week from former employees who accuse the company of taking unnecessary risks with technology that could become harmful. Today OpenAI released a new research paper apparently aimed at showing it is serious about tackling AI risk by making its models more explainable. In the paper, researchers from the company lay out a way to peer inside the AI model that powers ChatGPT. They devised a way to identify how it stores certain concepts--including those that might perhaps cause an AI system to misbehave. Although the research makes OpenAI's work on keeping AI in check more visible, it also highlights recent turmoil at the company.

OpenAI is fighting lawsuits from artists, writers, and publishers who allege it inappropriately used their work to train the algorithms behind ChatGPT and other AI systems. On Tuesday the company announced a tool apparently designed to appease creatives and rights holders, by granting them some control over how OpenAI uses their work. The company says it will launch a tool in 2025 called Media Manager that allows content creators to opt out their work from the company's AI development. In a blog post, OpenAI described the tool as a way to allow "creators and content owners to tell us what they own" and specify "how they want their works to be included or excluded from machine learning research and training." OpenAI said that it is working with "creators, content owners, and regulators" to develop the tool and intends it to "set an industry standard."

Users of the free version of ChatGPT or ChatGPT were not included. OpenAI is not the first to offer such legal protection, though as the creator of the wildly popular ChatGPT, which Altman said has 100 million weekly users, it is a heavyweight player in the industry. Google, Microsoft and Amazon have made similar offers to users of their generative AI software. Getty Images, Shutterstock and Adobe have extended similar financial liability protection for their image-making software. Altman made the announcement at OpenAI's first ever developer conference, meant to attract programmers working with ChatGPT.