Thread by @jason_kint

ok, I've now read the full NYT complaint filed this morning vs OpenAI and Microsoft. I'm impressed - it's future-focused around fair value for work vital to democracy. It also contains 220k pages of exhibits although the pages of Ex J stood out to me. more on that in a minute. /1

The complaint is a must-read imho, it's the only way to understand the alleged violations and the extent as to which the systems have been designed and tuned in order to generate certain output. It's filed in SDNY and it may well be a landmark case. /2

It's rooted in copyright law and the US Constitution and that's very much where it begins. /3

And as it notes there is a lot of money at stake. But it does well to look towards the future showing how violations used to create a substitute undermin existing (and future) biz models (including AI licensing) which fund the critical and costly journalism around the globe. /4

The complaint makes it clear early on that the goal in negotiations to license its content is to receive fair value and to help shepherd a future world with responsible AI and a healthy news ecosystem. /5

It cites a number of examples as to the human and financial cost that goes into journalism which can span multiple continents and require working through very challenging access limitations. /6

That cost in 2023 includes mass shootings, wars, terrorist attacks, elections, financial infrastructure and natural disasters around the world. There can be no debate as to what it is at stake here. /7

And with a clearly tied role for Microsoft, the complaint highlights abuses even in the most recent months. It shows this example of content lifted verbatim from a NYT report and then compares it to the approach taken by a search engine. /8

Here is the search comparison using Microsoft's own search engine. The difference in handling of copy from the content is immediately obvious and impossible to debate. /9

The complaint also steps through the preference and weighting used for sources with claims NYT-sourced content is more valued for training. And that undermining that real investment will undermine the entire market for journalism - including licensing it for future AI. /10

There are a number of examples in the complaint around weighting showing not all brands and content are equal but I found the overweighting of WebText2 as a pretty good example of how "high-quality" content is given preference. /11

And Google PageRank as one of the oldest approaches on the web to sorting authority across websites... here it's noted that nearly all of the few entries above NYT are social media so significantly less helpful to training a model. /12

So back to Exhibit J. Unlike the other 220k+ pages of exhibits documenting registered works, this exhibit contains 100 examples of alleged copyright violations with nearly identical content being outputted by ChatGPT. Again, it's impossible to argue with this. /13

Here are four examples. Again, the lawsuit includes one hundred of them. You get the point. I find this exhibit to be an incredibly powerful illustration for a lawsuit that will go before a jury of Americans. Again, it's impossible to argue with this. /14

And finally the lawsuit rips a gigantic hole into the presentation of OpenAI as a benevolent nonprofit. /15

and on top of this, it also systematically walks through Microsoft's role in facilitating and contributing to the alleged copyright. Side note from me: Microsoft has gained one trillion dollars in market cap in 2023. /16

Finally a quote from me on all of this that I supplied to news outlets earlier today. /17

Here is a link to the full complaint and all of the exhibits. I would start with the 69 page complaint and then skip to Exhibit J if interested and I were you. Cheers. /18 courtlistener.com/docket/6811704…

Here is exhibit J. It’s an incredibly powerful exhibit for a jury trial once you explain copyright. /19 storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…