Within the newest battle between synthetic intelligence and the media, main Danish newspapers and TV channels are threatening to sue OpenAI except the corporate compensates the nation’s press for allegedly utilizing their content material to coach its fashions.
“We need to be rewarded for our work [which] they skilled their mannequin,” says Karen Ronde, CEO of the Danish Press Collective Administration Group (DPCMO), which represents 99 % of Danish media, together with state broadcaster DR and TV 2. Ronde says DPCMO plans to sue except a deal is reached subsequent 12 months.
AI has created a brand new entrance in copyright regulation after a collection of lawsuits alleging that Microsoft-backed OpenAI took photos of reports corporations’ web sites with out permission to coach its AI fashions. Shortly after these lawsuits, OpenAI entered right into a collection of licensing agreements with main publishers, permitting the corporate to coach its future iterations of ChatGPT on their content material. Monetary phrases of the offers weren’t disclosed.
Danish media are actually making an attempt to power OpenAI to enter into collective bargaining with them, an uncommon tactic that, if profitable, might change into a mannequin for different smaller nations. Thus far, OpenAI has signed offers with publishers individually and introduced collaborations with the Monetary Occasions and Atlantic, in addition to German media conglomerate Axel Springer, French newspaper Le Monde and Spanish group Prisa.
After assembly with OpenAI on-line and in individual earlier this 12 months, Rønde says she bought the impression that Denmark was not a high precedence. “It was clear that the main focus was on offers in Germany, offers in France, offers in Spain and, in fact, US offers,” she says. “There are such a lot of content material creators in all the opposite territories, and now they’re left with nothing.”
Rønde despatched a letter to OpenAI’s lawyer on the Dutch agency Brinkhof, informing them of Danish copyright regulation, and mentioned she was awaiting a response. She assumes that OpenAI has already used content material from Danish press web sites as a result of the corporate did not inform her in any other case, she says. Neither OpenAI nor Brinkhof responded to WIRED’s request for remark.
Time is of the essence for Rönde. It desires to shut a cope with OpenAI in addition to Google’s Gemini subsequent 12 months, earlier than using AI chatbots and search engine evaluations additional marginalize writer web sites. “Maybe then it’s [will be] too late, and the worth of press publishers’ content material will probably be — in a single, two, three years — too low,” she says. “If we can not conclude a partnership settlement in a fairly brief time period, then we have to assert our rights.”
DPCMO was established in 2021 to assist Danish media negotiate with Large Tech. “We wanted to come back collectively, in any other case we have been afraid that Denmark can be too small a rustic to prioritize in discussions with Large Tech,” says Ronde.
Final 12 months, the group entered into preliminary license agreements with Microsoft Bing and Google to put content material from Danish publishers within the firm’s engines like google. Though the agreements specified that the publishers ought to obtain compensation from the 2 corporations, there was no settlement on the quantity within the agreements.