Court: Training AI Model Based on Copyrighted Data Is Not Fair Use as a Matter of Law; The National Law Review, February 11, 2025

 Joseph A. Meckes, Joseph Grasser of Squire Patton Boggs (US) LLP   - Global IP and Technology Law Blog,  The National Law Review; Court: Training AI Model Based on Copyrighted Data Is Not Fair Use as a Matter of Law

"In what may turn out to be an influential decision, Judge Stephanos Bibas ruled as a matter of law in Thompson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence that creating short summaries of law to train Ross Intelligence’s artificial intelligence legal research application not only infringes Thompson Reuters’ copyrights as a matter of law but that the copying is not fair use. Judge Bibas had previously ruled that infringement and fair use were issues for the jury but changed his mind: “A smart man knows when he is right; a wise man knows when he is wrong.”

At issue in the case was whether Ross Intelligence directly infringed Thompson Reuters’ copyrights in its case law headnotes that are organized by Westlaw’s proprietary Key Number system. Thompson Reuters contended that Ross Intelligence’s contractor copied those headnotes to create “Bulk Memos.” Ross Intelligence used the Bulk Memos to train its competitive AI-powered legal research tool. Judge Bibas ruled that (i) the West headnotes were sufficiently original and creative to be copyrightable, and (ii) some of the Bulk Memos used by Ross were so similar that they infringed as a matter of law...

In other words, even if a work is selected entirely from the public domain, the simple act of selection is enough to give rise to copyright protection."

ChatGPT Maker OpenAI Accused of Misusing Personal, Copyrighted Data; The San Francisco Standard, June 30, 2023

 Kevin Truong, The San Francisco Standard; ChatGPT Maker OpenAI Accused of Misusing Personal, Copyrighted Data

"The suit alleges that ChatGPT utilizes "stolen private information, including personally identifiable information, from hundreds of millions of internet users, including children of all ages, without their informed consent or knowledge."

The complaint states that by using this data, OpenAI and its related entities have enough information to replicate digital clones, encourage people's "professional obsolescence" and "obliterate privacy as we know it."

The complaint lists several plaintiffs identified by their initials, including a software engineer who claims that his online posts around technical questions could be used to eliminate his job, a 6-year-old who used a microphone to interact with ChatGPT and allegedly had his data harvested, and an actor who claims that OpenAI stole personal data from online applications to train its system."