• by Ray Schultz , November 28, 2024

A federal court has denied a motion by OpenAI to force The New York Times to disclose its own Gen AI usage as part of discovery in its lawsuit against OpenAI. 

U.S. Magistrate Judge Ona T. Wang wrote last week that OpenAI “asserts that this outstanding discovery is relevant to their fair use defense.”

Specifically, OpenAI seeks to “compel production of: (1) the Times’s use of nonparties’ generative artificial intelligence (“Gen AI”) tools; (2) the Times’s creation and use of its own Gen AI products; and (3) the Times’s position regarding Gen AI (e.g., positions expressed outside of litigation, knowledge about the training of third-party Gen AI tools using the Time’s works),” Wang continued. 

But the judge did not see the relevance to the case at hand.

“This case is about whether Defendant trained their LLMs using Plainiff’s copyrighted material, and whether that use constitutes copyright infringement. It is not a referendum on the benefits of Gen AI, on Plaintiff’s business practices, or about whether any of Plaintiff’s employees use Gen AI at work," Wang said. T"he broad scope of document production sought here is simply not relevant to Defendant’s purported fair use defense.”

Wang concluded, “Because Defendant has not demonstrated the relevance of the information sought, their motion to compel is DENIED."

Microsoft had earlier asked the court to order disclosure by the Times of its efforts to develop generative AI tools. The letter states, “Any failed efforts by The Times to develop its own Generative AI system using its works would undermine its claims of harm.”