News/Media Alliance files amicus brief in publishers' OpenAI, Microsoft case

The News/Media Alliance, a news publishers’ trade group, filed a friend-of-the-court (amicus) brief on Oct. 30 in the consolidated lawsuit in which more than a dozen news publishers accuse OpenAI and Microsoft of using their content without permission to train AI systems and to power real-time AI answers (retrieval-augmented generation, or RAG). The Alliance was joined by the National Newspaper Association, the National Press Photographers Association and ProPublica. The brief argues that the defendants’ uses are substitutes for the original journalism and so not “transformative” enough to count as fair use.

The case, before Judge Stein in the Southern District of New York, is at the summary judgment stage (a ruling without a trial). The Alliance says it is the first time a U.S. court will decide summary judgment on OpenAI’s conduct or on real-time use of news content. The brief cites research that ChatGPT sends 96% less referral traffic to publishers than traditional Google search; that figure is the Alliance’s, and the post does not name the study.