Allie Krusniak, Robots Versus Newspapers? What the Fair Use Doctrine Can Tell Us About Journalism's AI Problem, 25 Wake Forest J. Bus. & Intell. Prop. L. 214 (2025).
It should come as no surprise that OpenAI’s astonishingly quick rise to popularity has subjected the artificial intelligence (AI) research organization and Microsoft, its largest investor, to a string of lawsuits. These suits draw into question the methods that OpenAI uses to build its vast and mysterious dataset (which trains its popular Large Language Model (LLM), ChatGPT). These suits also posit how those methods may be infringing on others’ copyright-protected material. Additionally, these cases demonstrate the defenses that may be available to shield AI companies from liability for copyright infringement. For many years, companies have asked how to best adapt to the “digital age.” Now, companies have the same concerns about their adaption to the “age of AI.”
The press and its journalistic pursuits are largely at the forefront of these inquiries. Journalism is greatly protected under the First Amendment; however, it has a murkier relationship with copyright law. While there are established copyright protections for publishers, the application of copyright law to journalism presents a unique case because of the industry’s reliance on noncopyrightable facts. Now, AI presents a new challenge to the journalism industry that has already found its way into the courts.
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